What's the difference between bluster and bombast?

Bluster


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To blow fitfully with violence and noise, as wind; to be windy and boisterous, as the weather.
  • (v. i.) To talk with noisy violence; to swagger, as a turbulent or boasting person; to act in a noisy, tumultuous way; to play the bully; to storm; to rage.
  • (v. t.) To utter, or do, with noisy violence; to force by blustering; to bully.
  • (n.) Fitful noise and violence, as of a storm; violent winds; boisterousness.
  • (n.) Noisy and violent or threatening talk; noisy and boastful language.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) North Korea's blustering defiance at the annual US-South Korean exercises masks just a little fear that they could easily be turned into an all-out attack, and seems to work on the principle that the more you shout, the safer you will be.
  • (2) For all the bluster from Coalition MPs, farming communities will lose out.
  • (3) Ed Balls's bluster is confused and hypocritical when the reality is he'd do it all again," Fallon said.
  • (4) The curse of playing Ari Gold is that Jeremy Piven may have to spend the rest of his life trying to convince the world he is not a rage-fuelled blustering asshole.
  • (5) At which point restraint becomes as powerful as the Seeds' ravenous beer-hall bluster; a ten-minute Stagger Lee is a masterclass in tension and drama, Cave balancing precariously on the crowd barrier with audience members holding him up by the boot-heel as he leans out to sing his tale of a deviant killer directly into the eyes of a hypnotised girl in white hoisted on someone's shoulders.
  • (6) Cameron added that recent warnings from banks such as Lloyds and RBS, and from firms such as BP and Shell proved that the economic and financial risks of independence were not bluff and bluster or bullying.
  • (7) A steady rise in the yes vote in recent opinion polls also established that voters did not buy "the bluff and bluster" of those opposed to independence.
  • (8) He has a pretty easy ride if he’s prepared but if he tries to bluster it could hurt him,” Mann said.
  • (9) Terre'Blanche's credibility as a political leader collapsed after the anti-black threats voiced by the extreme white right proved to be little more than bluster.
  • (10) But for all Clegg's bluster, he's not setting tough enough tests for the changes the prime minister must make to his NHS plans.
  • (11) This is nothing but bluster and hot air with precisely nothing achieved.
  • (12) The book has action, but it also has a point; it has pathos, where the film is all comic-action bluster.
  • (13) Besides the election of Trump, with all his attendant nationalist bluster and populist economic and trade pronouncements, Brexit has seen the UK turn its back on Europe on the back of economic and immigration concerns, and closer to home, the 2016 federal election culminated in the resurgence of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party.
  • (14) While many fiscal conservatives view Huckabee warily, he has a solid social conservative thread and a folksy charm that would pair well with Trump’s big city bluster.
  • (15) Underneath all the showbiz bluster, he was an old softie.
  • (16) From all accounts, he was a bully, a manipulator, and a blustering, pessimistic, emotionally dishonest man.
  • (17) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Hillary Clinton criticizes the ‘bluster and bigotry’ of the Republican campaign Before Tuesday’s elections, Clinton was ahead of Sanders by 673 to 477 pledged delegates and – with the vast majority of super delegates too – was nearly halfway to securing the 2,383 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
  • (18) On the other hand, if Iran is dragging its feet and compliance problems have arisen, that would make it much easier for a new president to walk away from the deal.” Einhorn also expressed doubts that a Republican president, for all of the bluster among the current crop of candidates, would actually turn his back on an agreement if it appeared to be working.
  • (19) I think I have made a lot of sacrifices,” he blustered.
  • (20) In the past, Zevon has occasionally been guilty of LA sludge-rock bluster, but these songs flash back to the rough simplicity of his original inspiration, Bob Dylan.

Bombast


Definition:

  • (n.) Originally, cotton, or cotton wool.
  • (n.) Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing; padding.
  • (n.) Fig.: High-sounding words; an inflated style; language above the dignity of the occasion; fustian.
  • (a.) High-sounding; inflated; big without meaning; magniloquent; bombastic.
  • (v. t.) To swell or fill out; to pad; to inflate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) With an out-of-session Congress deadlocked over immigration reform and right-wing lawmakers hell-bent on “sealing the border”, the White House faces intense pressure to do something – anything – about immigration, after years of burying a civil rights crisis in a mire of political tone-deafness and jingoistic bombast.
  • (2) Dotcom raged against LeaseWeb's decision in a series of tweets starting on Wednesday afternoon, suggesting in characteristically bombastic style that "this is the largest data massacre in the history of the internet".
  • (3) He is bombastic, the party establishment hates him, and he says awful things about Obama.
  • (4) In Back To School (1986), he is a bombastic, uneducated self-made millionaire businessman who enrols in college in order to encourage his son to complete his education.
  • (5) Experts may dismiss Pyongyang's recent threats to rain nuclear missiles on the US mainland as bombast by an attention-seeking dictator, but its promise to target Baengnyeong is being taken seriously.
  • (6) So the idea of a benevolent dictator is not my cup of tea Rand Paul Paul said polls became part of “a self-reinforcing news cycle because of the celebrity nature that goes on, on and on”, though he accepted that voters might “at a superficial level be attracted to bombast, insults, junior high sort of lobbing of verbal bombs that kind of stuff”.
  • (7) Yet Duterte’s tough on crime bombast goes down well with Filipinos.
  • (8) Veteran fundraisers criticize the media coverage generated by Trump’s television personality and bombastic one liners.
  • (9) Throughout the case Brandis had been venturing his trademark bombast, but the settlement was too much.
  • (10) At the Japanese company's typically bombastic E3 press conference – the last act of the traditional day of press conferences prior to the show's proper opening – we learned that the PlayStation 4 will go on sale before the end of the year at a cost of £349 (significantly less than the Xbox One's £429 RRP), and that it will completely eschew any of the Draconian digital rights management (DRM) measures which Microsoft has mooted for the Xbox One, leaving PS4 owners just as free to sell or redistribute second-hand games as PS3 owners are now.
  • (11) On the Republican side, that mostly meant the rise of Trump – the bombastic real estate mogul who remains the frontrunner with only 27 days to go before the Iowa caucuses.
  • (12) Matteo Salvini, the bombastic rightwing leader of Italy’s xenophobic Northern League, has even accused Pope Francis of doing a disservice to Catholics by promoting dialogue with Muslims.
  • (13) What is playing on these stations is not a loop of upbeat midi video-game songs or some bombastic score written for the game, but Michael Jackson, Hall and Oates, Cutting Crew and Luther Vandross.
  • (14) The fact is that Renzi’s defeat was almost a foregone conclusion give the scale of the opposition he faced, and not just from Salvini and Beppe Grillo, the bombastic former comedian and head of the Five Star Movement .
  • (15) The bombastic, swaggering, sometimes vulgar billionaire has stunned the political world, plunged the Republican party into civil war and, among the pundit class, relegated the prospect of the 240-year-old republic’s first female president to a footnote.
  • (16) Words matter and remembering that we were all once strangers in a strange land and that the US is made better in every generation by the arrival of New Americans is central to my campaign.” The Republican party is making a safe space for really racist​​ undertones against undocumented immigrants Professor Jose Luis Benavides Vargas wants candidates to understand that their words matter – even more so in a campaign cycle so far dominated by the bombast of a billionaire businessman who began his campaign by describing Mexican immigrants as “rapists” who are “bringing crime”.
  • (17) To the United States government, defenders of the war in Vietnam and conservatives everywhere, Ali was the most dangerous of enemies, a converted zealot, the bombastic mouthpiece of a religion few until then had heard of and hardly any of whom understood, the Nation of Islam.
  • (18) Behind all the bombast Kinnear possesses a certain warmth and shrewdness that appeals to some players.
  • (19) The impeccably-coifed rockers from Sheffield opened the ceremony in bombastic style, launching into their hit single R U Mine?
  • (20) Then a campaign group created a pro-voting registration website called Grime 4 Corbyn – featuring the track Corbyn Riddim, which sets one of his speeches to a bombastic instrumental.