What's the difference between bombast and rhetoric?

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.

Rhetoric


Definition:

  • (n.) The art of composition; especially, elegant composition in prose.
  • (n.) Oratory; the art of speaking with propriety, elegance, and force.
  • (n.) Hence, artificial eloquence; fine language or declamation without conviction or earnest feeling.
  • (n.) Fig. : The power of persuasion or attraction; that which allures or charms.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Migrant voters are almost as numerous as current Ukip supporters but they are widely overlooked and risk being increasingly disaffected by mainstream politics and the fierce rhetoric around immigration caused partly by the rise of Ukip,” said Robert Ford from Manchester University, the report’s co-author.
  • (2) In a poll before the debate, 48% predicted that Merkel, who will become Europe's longest serving leader if re-elected on 22 September, would emerge as the winner of the US-style debate, while 26% favoured Steinbruck, a former finance minister who is known for his quick-wit and rhetorical skills, but sometimes comes across as arrogant.
  • (3) Federal judges who blocked the bans cited harsh rhetoric employed by Trump on the campaign trail , specifically a pledge to ban all Muslims from entering the US and support for giving priority to Christian refugees, as being reflective of the intent behind his travel ban.
  • (4) This paper employs a rhetorical form designed to clarify and sharpen the focus of the very special stance required--which must be painstakingly learned under careful supervision--in order to effectively tune in to communications coming from the unconscious of the patient.
  • (5) Neither assertion was strictly accurate, but Obama was on a rhetorical roll.
  • (6) In what appeared to be pointed criticism of increasingly firm rhetoric from Cameron on multinational tax engineering, Carr insisted tax avoidance "cannot be about morality – there are no absolutes".
  • (7) May’s rhetoric against the Labour leader appeared to have toughened significantly, underlining the Conservatives’ determination to exploit what they regard as Corbyn’s weaknesses.
  • (8) Similar tensions afflict the US political scene, where anti-immigrant and anti-trade rhetoric have been prominent from the start of the current presidential election round.
  • (9) Samoa will host the third international conference on small island developing states (Sids) from 1 September, and I want leaders from the 193 nations attending to rise above rhetoric and grandstanding, and move closer to binding international agreements on climate change.
  • (10) Politically speaking, that could generate some powerful questions, as families on the cliff-edge begin to digest politicians' rhetoric about hardworking families and ask themselves: "How did we get here?"
  • (11) The striking weakness of Clegg's thesis was what it left out in its attempt to carve out a position for restless party activists as their poll ratings dip (down to 14% according to ICM) as Miliband tones down his own anti-Lib Dem rhetoric to woo them.
  • (12) This is a chancellor who has produced a budget for hedge fund managers more than for small businesses.” Corbyn made a point of mocking some of the chancellor’s grand rhetoric of recent years.
  • (13) A solid first step would be to both materially and rhetorically support that mechanism,” said Catanzano of the International Rescue Committee.
  • (14) The prime minister is coming under increasing pressure from the heads of some of Britain's largest multinational corporations who have urged Cameron to stop "moralising" and rein in his rhetoric on tax avoidance ahead of a G8 summit next month.
  • (15) You can actually create, be a builder and you can make things.” Wozniak’s faith in the power of education is no empty rhetoric.
  • (16) This coercive style of rhetoric is one reason why so many people have stopped listening to what politicians have to say.
  • (17) "We have rhetorical pressure, which we are using, and we have the Seventh Fleet, which nobody wants to use, and in between our options are more constrained," he said.
  • (18) So we have futile rhetoric on immigration, but minimal discussion over how to reinvent politics in the digital age.
  • (19) The hawkish rhetoric by Iranians feeds the rhetoric of hawkish Republicans , and the front page of Kayhan” – a conservative Iranian paper – “reads like the ticker on Fox News,” he added.
  • (20) Many supporters are neither leftist, nor admirers of Syriza’s anti-capitalist rhetoric, but Greeks appalled by the catastrophic effects of policies that have left 1.5 million unemployed, 3 million facing poverty and the vast majority unable to pay their bills.