What's the difference between pompous and supercilious?

Pompous


Definition:

  • (a.) Displaying pomp; stately; showy with grandeur; magnificent; as, a pompous procession.
  • (a.) Ostentatious; pretentious; boastful; vainlorious; as, pompous manners; a pompous style.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Leave aside the noxious and pompous view that the views of non-national-security-professionals - whatever that means - should be ignored when it comes to militarism, US foreign policy and war crimes.
  • (2) On last Friday's Radio 4 Today programme , the historian Robert Service played his part to perfection, pompously advising the BBC to "get some sense of proportion".
  • (3) He says that the idea of the corrupt, lying, pompous politician has become "the equivalent of the mother-in-law or Irish joke of the 1970s".
  • (4) As the debate reached its conclusion, Stockwood, dressed grandly in a purple cassock and pompously fondling his crucifix in a way that was devastatingly lampooned by Rowan Atkinson a week later on a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch, delivered his parting shot of, "You'll get your 30 pieces of silver."
  • (5) She was terrifying but not pompous, and she could be quite playful, quite cosy in a strange way."
  • (6) Auda is more of a problem: his character is portrayed as an unreformed savage who cares only for violence, treasure and his own pompous self-image.
  • (7) Giles Oakley London • In conception and format, it was trite – while being undeservedly pompous and self-esteeming.
  • (8) About three years ago, he was teasing me about something – being thick probably, or making pompous speeches.
  • (9) His chairman, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, was more magnificently pompous, as befits an ex-foreign secretary.
  • (10) Please don't read my pompous views above as referring to the great majority of gallery shows, where dealers display art they hope someone will want to buy for their home, and new collectors are born every week.
  • (11) When those inside the temple are pompous hypocrites, maybe it is the better place to be.
  • (12) Those who actively seek out linguistic slip-ups will correct you with such glee that it makes you doubt whether their commitment to "calling out" bigotry matches their commitment to pompous arseholerly.
  • (13) Chaplin himself wrote about this process: "Sometimes a musician would get pompous with me, and I would cut him short: 'Whatever the melody is, the rest is just a vamp.'
  • (14) I realised that my goal here really is to represent – it sounds super-pompous – how we think and how we associate.
  • (15) "Without wishing to sound pompous, I do more research now than ever.
  • (16) I will leave the public to judge his actions.” Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, said it should be no surprise that his black cab members across London were considering “a boycott of the Tory toff David Mellor over his outrageous, pompous and disgraceful tirade against one of their colleagues”.
  • (17) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – five reasons we're still slightly worried Read more This caped crusader has had a personality upgrade Facebook Twitter Pinterest Photograph: Warner Bros The Batman we met in The Lego Movie aways seemed an unlikely candidate for his own solo film, a pompous jerk who was more Flash Thompson than Bruce Wayne.
  • (18) It was as absurd for a Tory MP to demand Abbott's resignation from the shadow cabinet on account of this remark as it was for Ed Miliband to tell her pompously "in no uncertain terms" that it had been "unacceptable".
  • (19) It's pompous twaddle with no relevance to fucking anything."
  • (20) This is all the more surprising since Tolstoy seems to speak freely, in his fiction, with the sort of moralistic-prophetic voice – the voice of a teacher of right and wrong – that lesser writers are obliged to use sparingly, unless they want to sound pompous and didactic.

Supercilious


Definition:

  • (a.) Lofty with pride; haughty; dictatorial; overbearing; arrogant; as, a supercilious officer; asupercilious air; supercilious behavior.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Comment is perfectly legitimate, but the sneering, supercilious, specious and dismissive contributions masquerading as ‘commentary’ belittle the claims of a ‘quality’ paper.” Before attempting to assess the validity of the reader’s analysis – broadly shared by some other readers – I think his email reflects one or two other interesting aspects of the demographics of the Guardian’s readership and the left.
  • (2) After former tabloid editor Piers Morgan was fired from CNN , there were warnings that the US media was now poisoned to British accents and supposed superciliousness.
  • (3) But when I saw the advert it occurred to me that it, and that supercilious exclamation mark in particular, could in fact give people an excuse to express their homophobia.
  • (4) A decade later when I met him again in a hotel suite in London, it was more Mona Lisa than Cheshire Cat - coolly supercilious, ultimately indecipherable.
  • (5) It was often veiled, supercilious and sinister, but on screen he made us an offer we couldn't refuse.
  • (6) So the relationship that begins at the Milford railway station (it's two metaphorical stops down the line from Borchester – The Archers began five years after Brief Encounter) with a piece of grit in Laura's eye and Alec's unquestionably clean handkerchief will lead to afternoons together, lunch and a visit to the cinema (their silly movie is called Flames of Passion), a country drive, and an awkward trip to a friend's flat (the supercilious Valentine Dyall).
  • (7) Recently, I have caught myself saying something in everyday conversation that a few years ago would have elicited a cry of “supercilious wanker” from me if I’d heard someone else say it.
  • (8) Brexit, said Putin, was a result of irritation over Britain subsidising weaker economies, and “the British government’s self-assuredness and supercilious attitude to life-changing decisions in their own country and Europe in general”.
  • (9) I was made to regret it almost immediately when I was loudly condemned as a “supercilious prick”.
  • (10) Shimell's character is very supercilious and unsympathetic – he has a Basil Fawlty-esque fit of temper in a restaurant – and it is not easy to tell if this is deliberate, or if Kiarostami thinks Shimell elegant and cerebral.
  • (11) To others, though, he is at his supercilious worst here; floating the idea that, having withdrawn from the union, Scotland, in its beneficence, can turn round and preach to the English about how to deal with the nasty Tories.
  • (12) Their particular brand of upper class snobbery is now so anachronistic it’s simply amusing: in an obituary this week of Deborah , the writer pointed to a list of the late Duchess of Devonshire’s dislikes, which included but was not limited to “the bits of paper that fall out of magazines; female weather forecasters; the words ‘environment’, ‘conservation’ and ‘leisure’; supercilious assistants at makeup counters; dietary fads; skimmed milk; girls with slouching shoulders and Tony Blair.” And then there are the Nazis.
  • (13) You know when you're out walking and you see a party of riders, and they give you a slightly supercilious look?
  • (14) President Barack Obama is often criticised for superciliousness and arrogance.
  • (15) Now usually it would be advisable to ignore such news and treat in the same way as someone telling you that the sun is "hot and yellow", Piers Morgan is "smug and annoying", Katie Hopkins is "snobbish and supercilious" and the Mill is "tired and emotional" — it's just the way of life.