(n.) The state or dignity of a high priest; specifically, the office of the pope.
(n.) The term of office of a pontiff.
(v. i.) To perform the duty of a pontiff.
Example Sentences:
(1) Highlighting an excerpt of the interview, which Harri claimed was "implying the mayor is 'losing his touch' because he 'failed' to upstage the PM", he criticised the decision to allow Purnell to "pontificate without challenge, qualification or allowing us a right to reply" and described the author as someone who "knows no one in No 10".
(2) RDE: I wouldn't expect the head of Oxfam to subsist on gruel, but I'd like charity workers to see their jobs as vocations rather than a well-paid career providing both generous financial rewards and the opportunity to pontificate from the moral high ground.
(3) The group’s trip to Rome is designed to coincide with a workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Tuesday called Protect the Earth, Dignify Humanity, which will feature speeches by Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs.
(4) If she genuinely can't understand that, there is little point her pontificating on any of the minutiae of the free market system nor the political or economic world at large.
(5) But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.
(6) The way western politicians and media have pontificated about Israel's onslaught on Gaza, you'd think it was facing an unprovoked attack from a well-armed foreign power.
(7) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, says Spain will suffer internally and externally as long as the political paralysis endures.
(8) Prime among these is Katie Hopkins, a former Apprentice contestant who now writes a column for the Sun and pontificates on daytime TV, appearing on the This Morning sofa as regularly as an untreated cold sore.
(9) In one of the longest, most passionate and sweeping speeches of his pontificate, the Argentine-born pope used his visit to Bolivia to ask forgiveness for the sins committed by the Roman Catholic church in its treatment of native Americans during what he called the “so-called conquest of America”.
(10) Emilio Sáenz-Francés, a professor of history and international relations at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, said that while the central government may have succeeded in watering down Sunday’s vote, it had done little to address the underlying grassroots movement pushing for independence.
(11) The meeting was arranged by the Argentine head of the pontifical academy, Monsignor Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, a good friend of the pope’s.
(12) I’m here to talk about trade not to pontificate on other issues.
(13) But she says now that she'd been doing interviews all day, "then somehow, I started liking the sound of my own voice pontificating.
(14) But Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and a friend of the pope’s, suggested at a recent conference in Philadelphia that the pope would try to present a more nuanced understanding of the US, including in his discussion of economics.
(15) But she thought it might also indicate that the Vatican "may ... be pulling back due to concerns about ITF pressure to declassify records from the WWII-era pontificate of Pope Pius XII".
(16) The 77-year-old former archbishop of Buenos Aires will be the fifth pope to meet the Queen, who first visited the Vatican as Princess Elizabeth during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.
(17) Any commentator who speaks of “Ireland” (26 counties thereof) gaining “independence” (sic) whole ignoring the fact that almost one million of its citizens are now trapped in a gerrymandered United Kingdom statelet in which they want no part of, nor ever wanted, shouldn’t be pontificating on Scottish independence .
(18) Fourteen-year-olds pontificating on this must be making the old field marshal turn in his grave, and this debate also perpetuates the myth that British soldiers were "lions led by donkeys", the idea that the brave ordinary Tommy was let down by the brandy-soaked toffs in charge.
(19) The big bang, which is today posited as the origin of the world, does not contradict the divine act of creation; rather, it requires it,” the pope said in an address to a meeting at the pontifical academy of sciences.
(20) The crowd of excitable young and young-ish people gathered to hear him pontificate believe what he’s saying, even if he doesn’t.
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.