Bombast & Bluster

Bombast (pronounced bom-bast)

(1) Speech deemed pompous for the occasion or context; pretentious or grandiloquent language.

(2) Cotton or cotton wool (archaic).

(3) Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments or upholstery; padding.

1560-1570: A corruption of the earlier bombase (raw cotton), from the Old French bombace (cotton, cotton wadding), from the from the Medieval Latin bombācem, accusative of the Late Latin bombāx (cotton; linteorum aut aliae quaevis quisquiliae (towels or any other rubbish (rags))), a corrupted variant use of bombyx (silk; silkworm (which in Medieval Greek came to mean “cotton”)), from the Ancient Greek βόμβυξ (bómbux) (silkworm) and perhaps connected with both certain oriental words and the Middle Persian pambak (cotton), possibly related to a primitive Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.  From the same source came the Swedish bomull, the Danish bomuld (cotton) and, (via Turkish forms), the Modern Greek mpampaki, the Rumanian bumbac and the Serbo-Croatian pamuk.  The German Baumwolle (cotton) is thought likely to be the Latin word altered by folk-etymology to look like “tree wool”.  Both the Lithuanian bovelna and the Polish bawełna are partial translations from the German.  The earliest known appearance in print of the adjective bombastic was in 1704.  The synonyms include fustian, grandiloquence, purple prose, overblown, pretentious and the now obsolete aureation.  Bombast is a noun, verb & adjective, bombaster & bombastry are nouns, bombastic & bombastical are adjectives and bombastically is an adverb; the noun plural is bombasts.

In English, the word “bombase” was used of raw cotton as early as the 1550s and the sense of “stuffing and padding for clothes or upholstery” would have begun as the verbal shorthand of tailors, seamstresses and artisans making clothing, furniture and such.  Remarkably quickly, the idea of what was done with chairs and garments (padding them out) was co-opted to mean “pompous, empty speech”, that sense in use as early as the 1580s.  The idea was just as cotton (soft, loose, insubstantial) was used to “swell” clothing or upholstery to provide the illusion of something more substantial, so it was used of speech and writing judged as “swollen by extravagant sentiments and expressions which add nothing to the meaning”.  The old press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Max Aitken, 1879-1964) used the term “highfalutin nonsense” whenever he detected bombast in anything his editors were proposing to publish.

Volkswagen Super Beetle Cabriolet by Karmann: 1978 (left) & 1977 (right).  The taillights were dubbed "elephant's feet" and were that large to comply with US regulations which demanded certain dimensions and luminosity from both the rear and side-views.  They proved popular with third-party builders, especially those in "neo-classical" business making bodies using the motifs of the inter-war years.  Some cars are described as "bombastic" (a view one suspects based often on perceptions of the typical owner) but that was never applied to the modest Beetle.  There was though much bombast in the soft-top which to this day remains one of the industry's most impressive.  

Shaming what UK manufacturers offered even in their more expensive ranges, classic Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle 1938-2003) Cabriolets manufactured between 1949-1980 by coachbuilder Karmann featured a commendably heavy, weatherproof, multi-layered folding soft-top roof.  An intricate construction of structural steel, shaped timber members, vinyl and safety glass, the bombast was a rubberized horsehair (with some later variants).  Close to two inches (50 mm) thick and affording what was by convertible standards outstanding sound insulation and weather-proofing, the factory used a “sandwich” design in which the materials were arrayed in three distinct functional layers: (1) The outer layer originally was a heavy-duty Pinpoint vinyl (a two-ply composite featuring a PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) with a cotton sateen inner backing) although there was for years the option of canvas and Mohair and canvas was used for the later runs.  (2) The bombast was the “insulation padding”, a thick matting originally only of rubberized horsehair although this later was augmented by a reinforcing of coconut fibre and burlap with late build examples switching to a dense, foam rubber. (3) The headliner (inner layer) was a soft-to-touch, full-length inner canopy that hid the mechanism, emulating the look in a closed vehicle; it was made from either perforated vinyl (usually white or off-white) or a cotton-mohair fabric.  Unlike many convertibles in the era (including Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz which used discoloration-prone Perspex), the Karmann cabriolets included a solid frame holding a tempered safety glass window and from 1968 this included a integrated electric defroster wire grid.

Also by extension, “fustian” was used as a synonym, that being a type of cloth that lend garments a “stiff expansive character”, the similarity to “fuss” & “fuss” thought to have added to the appeal.  In English, “fustian” proved adaptable.  Originally, it was a coarse fabric made from cotton and flax but in modern use, while the texture is emulated, it’s now usually made with twilled wool, cotton or a cotton-linen blend.  The nature of the fabric made it suitable for furnishings such as bedspreads and many garments including skirts, coats and jackets and a specific variant with a short pile (almost always in sombre shades) is used still for menswear.  The noun fustian was from the Middle English fustian (of the fabric), from the Old French fustaine & fustaigne (persisting in modern French as futaine), from the Medieval Latin fūstāneum, from the (pannus) fūstāneus or the (tela) fūstānea, thought to be a reference to “Fustat, locality of Cairo” although this is contested.  Fustat (Al-Fustat) became the first Islamic capital of Egypt and its outgrowth was the origin of modern Cairo.  In commerce, the use of fustian (based on the texture rather than the materials) extended to a whole class of fabrics including corduroy and velveteen and there was also the now rarely seen alcoholic concoction so named (also in older guides as “rum fustian”).  That was a hot drink made variously with beer, gin, sherry or white wine (and often probably what conveniently fell to hand) to which was added egg yolk, lemon and spices (doubtlessly there were many variations).  There has been speculation about how the drink picked up the fabric’s name with suggestions including something to do the color or the nature of the mix being “rough”.  Fustianists & fustianism are nouns, fustianize is a verb and fustianed is an adjective; the noun plural is fustianists.

That literary use is thought likely based on fustian fabrics being used to make cushions, pillowcases (ie things associated with “padding or stuffing), the adjectival use in literature an attributive figurative use of the noun; it suggested (usually disapprovingly) words were inflated, pompous or pretentious (ie bombastic) and there was as late as the mid-seventeenth century the parallel sense of “incoherent or unintelligible speech or writing; gibberish, nonsense”.  Literary critics (a most judgmental lot), of course liked to apply “fustian” to anything they deemed “a bit too purple” and probably, at least mentally, kept lists of offenders but poets and authors could be just as bitchy about their literary colleagues, although Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735) was a tribute to his subject’s many achievements and a memorial of their friendship, prompted by the news the physician John Arbuthnot (circa 1667–1735) was on his death-bed:

The bard whom pilfer'd pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half a crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,
And strains, from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year:
He, who still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:

Although the use of “he” does suggest Pope may have had in mind a certain writer, scholars believe he was presenting a sequence of composite caricatures of the kinds of “bad poets” he thought were a plague on the language, their sins including plagiarism, being shameless translators for hire, being so muddle-minded as never to attain meaning and producing lines so inflated (fustian) that they ceased even to be “bad poetry” and became “manic prose”.  As was at the time wise for satirists, Pope often deliberately would avoid explicitly identifying his targets although knowing readers would have seen through the thin disguises; “reading between the lines” as useful then as it is now in certain countries, some even “democracies”.  His views on the use of language are however crustal clear and “sublimely bad” is a fine phrase, suggesting a writer's failures might be so spectacularly ghastly they achieve a kind of perverse grandeur, the notion he would, three years hence, return to in the mock critical treatise Peri Bathous or, Of the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728).  In that, he assured readers he would “…lead them as it were by the hand… the gentle downhill way to Bathos; the bottom, the end, the central point the non plus ultra [nothing further beyond], of true Modern Poesy!”  Unfortunately, by the twentieth century and beyond, students of the “sublime in the ridiculous” had become victims of “the curse of plenty” but Pope can’t be blamed for that; he did his bit.

The literary term bathos (from the Ancient Greek βάθος (bathos) (depth) is used of types of writing which may include the bombastic.  Bathos is attained when a striving at the sublime, over-reaches and “topples into the absurd”, a classic collection of the bathetic was published in The Stuffed Owl (1930), compiled by the English authors Dominic Bevan “D.B.” Wyndham Lewis (1891–1969) & Charles James Lee (1870–1956).  Lewis should not be confused with the English painter, writer & critic (Percy) Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957), best remembered for his seminal contribution to short-lived Vorticist movement in art that was extinguished by the blast of World War I (1914-1918).  Although the usual suspects from poetaster’s (bad poets) role of infamy appear in The Stuffed Owl including the American Julia Ann Moore (1847–1920) and Scotland’s notoriously inept William McGonagall (1825-1902), Lewis & Lee didn’t defer to reputations or the canon and among the entries were lines by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Lord Byron (1788–1824), John Dryden (1631–1700), Robert "Rabbie" Burns (1759–1796) and Robert Browning (1812–1889). Curiously, while the noun bombaster (a bombastic speaker or writer) exists, there’s no such thing as a bombastee (one compelled to listen to read the words of a bombaster).

I Am Charlotte Simmons (20004) by Tom Wolfe (1930–2018), a hefty 688 pages, it "won" the Literary Review's 2004 Bad Sex Award but was said to be a favorite of George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; POTUS 2001-2009) so there was that.

Lewis & Lee took to their work with a light touch.  Rather than condemnation, it was admitted: “Bad verse has its canons, like good verse” and the selection of the “bad” was no less difficult than the challenges in assembling the “best” for a more conventional anthology.  As their argument went, “good” bad Verse has “an eerie, supernal beauty comparable in its accidents with the beauty of good verse” and it was likely as difficult to write a genuinely “good” bad poem as it is to write a good poem.  That was a generous view but there was also an audience for the bad, William McGonagall often engaged to give recitals of his work, always including the infamous The Tay Bridge Disaster (1880), its place in literary history assured by appearing usually in lists of the “worst ever poems”.  That “monetizing of awfulness” happens also in music.  The Portsmouth Sinfonia (1970-1979) was an English orchestra open to “musicians” with neither skill nor training and their idiosyncratic performances were well attended, as were those of Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944).  Ms Foster Jenkins (who was first married at 15, the age of consent in Pennsylvania then ten despite it being north of the Mason-Dixon Line) was rich enough to indulge her hobby which was singing Opera and that she did, giving public performances so awful that word spread and most were sold-out.  In literary use, there was also (between 1993-2019) the “Bad Sex Award”, described by organizing committee as “Britain’s most dreaded literary prize”.  Conferred every winter by the London-based Literary Review, it was awarded to the author judged to have penned the worst sex scene published in the previous twelve months.  It was established in 1993 by the magazine’s former editor, Auberon Waugh (1939–2001).

1938 Mercedes-Benz 320 (W142, 1937-1942) Cabriolet B in a factory promotional image.  As well as the upholstery, the folding soft-top contained horse-hair bombast. 

European manufacturers and coach-builders used “cabriolet” to distinguish certain convertibles from the more rakish, sporty roadsters although the English had to be different and decided they were DHCs (drop-head coupés) which meant a convertible version of a FHC (fixed-head coupé).  Cabriolets were for decades a fixture in the catalogues (low-priced vehicles as well as the better-remembered exotics) but in the late 1920s (with typically Teutonic attention to detail), Daimler-Benz codified the naming conventions for cabriolets built by Mercedes-Benz:

Cabriolet A: A cabriolet with two doors and room for two passengers.

Cabriolet B: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers, fitted with a rear-quarter window for the rear seat.

Cabriolet C: A cabriolet with two doors and room for four or five passengers with no rear quarter window.

Cabriolet D: A cabriolet with four doors and room for four to six passengers.

Cabriolet F: A cabriolet with four doors, built on an extended wheelbase, usually for state or formal use with room for six or more passengers.

The jump in the factory's designations from "D" to "F" obviously skipped "E" and because that didn't seem the German way of doing things, there was speculation another type of open coachwork had been planned but which was never built because of the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945).  That's not impossible (some records were lost during the war) but the archives for the period have revealed nothing which supports the theory and the sometimes repeated assertion the "Cabriolet F" label was an allusion to "Führer" (the car's most infamous customer) is simply wrong because the designation was first used in the 1920s, prior to the Nazis gaining power and creating the Third Reich (1933-1945).  Quite what would have been the configuration of the allegedly “missing Cabriolet E” is purely speculative and those who have written on the subject have concluded it’d likely have been either (1) a four-door body distinguished only from a Cabriolet D by a longer wheelbase or different side-window treatment or (2) the intended differentiation of a Cabriolet F without the rear-quarter window (as some were built but never uniquely designated).

Bombast, in its original sense, could prove fatal.

Bomb-blasted: the Mercedes-Benz 320 Cabriolet B in which SS-Obergruppenführer (General) Reinhard Heydrich (1904–1942; head of the Reich Security Main Office 1939-1942) was being driven on the day of the assassination attempt.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) had in 1938 appointed Baron Konstantin von Neurath (1873–1956; Foreign Minister of Germany 1932-1938) as Reichsprotektor (a sort of proconsul (from the Latin prōconsul, a shortened form of prō consule (one acting on behalf of the consul))) of occupied Bohemia and Moravia (a region of Czechoslovakia).  Hitler did not make the appointment because of any great regard for the baron’s administrative or diplomatic skills but because (1) he wanted the more obsequious Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) as his cipher in the Foreign Ministry and (2) he thought von Neurath’s reputation in international circles as a “moderate” would mollify the outrage expressed about the brutish and cynical tactics employed by the Nazis in their takeover of the Czech lands.  To an extend the political window dressing worked, not because von Neurath’s delegated rule was benign but because news of much of what was being done was suppressed and international attention had already turned to events elsewhere as concerns grew over Hitler’s next target.

With the outbreak of World War II, von Neurath’s regime became harsher with an increased rate of imprisonment in concentration camps, more executions and less restrained persecution of Czech Jews (the last measure not wholly without support from sections of Czech society).  However, bloody though it was, what the Reichsprotektor did was mild compared with what was done in other conquered territories (notably Poland and later in the Soviet Union when the Nazis turned to genocide as a “final solution”) and, not best pleased, late in 1941 Hitler appointed SS General Reinhard Heydrich as von Neurath’s nominal deputy although Heydrich assumed full executive authority, leaving the Reichsprotektor as a figurehead, the Nazis assuming his veneer of (relative) respectability remained useful.  Hitler knew the murderous Heydrich would not be troubled by the notions of humanity or residual decency that had constrained von Neurath and he wasn’t disappointed in his latest appointment for within days martial law had been imposed on the protectorate with thousands and arrested and hundreds executed.  When Hitler wanted something done, if possible, he’d allocate the task to the SS.

The SS (ᛋᛋ in Armanen runes; Schutzstaffel (literally “protection squadron” but translated variously as “protection squad”, “security section" etc)) was formed (under different names) in 1923 as a Nazi party squad to provide security at public meetings (then often rowdy and violet affairs) and was later re-purposed as a personal bodyguard for Hitler.  The SS name was adopted in 1925 and during the Third Reich the institution evolved into a vast economic, industrial and military apparatus more than a million strong to the point where some historians (and contemporaries) regarded it as a kind of “state within a state”.  The Waffen-SS (armed SS (ie equipped with military-grade weapons)) existed on a small scale as early as 1933 before Hitler’s agreement was secured to create a formation at divisional strength and growth was gradual even after the outbreak of hostilities in 1939 and it was the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which triggered the Waffen-SS’s expansion into a multi-national armoured force with over 800,000 men under arms.  As well as the SS’s role in the administration of the many concentration and extermination camps, the Waffen-SS was widely implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Konstantin von Neurath.  At the first Nuremberg Trial (1946-1946) he received a 15 year sentence but was released in 1954 because of ill health, dying within two years.  Had Heydrich lived to be tried, he'd have been hanged.

Just as Heydrich understood Hitler’s language, so the Czechs understood his and rapidly the once troublesome protectorate was pacified.  Heydrich was however there not merely to impose and maintain order but also to ensure the agricultural and industrial capacity efficiently was exploited to benefit the German economy and war machine; rapidly his “carrot & stick” approach produced dividends with production rising and resources re-allocated within the Czech economy towards the needs dictated by Berlin.  Heydrich proved remarkably successful in his role, his “cut the head off the snake” (ie identifying and what would now be called “neutralizing” those likely to be troublesome) approach ending acts of sabotage or other resistance while his increases in the allocation of food and consumer goods to the population resulted in a workforce which, it not exactly “happy”, was at least compliant and productive.  Having witnessed the crackdowns and collective punishments that had characterized the early days of his rule, the Czech population had little taste for resistance, knowing retribution would be swift, brutal and widespread, meaning the place soon became peaceful.  Heydrich however regarded his tactics as a temporary measure and planned with the end of the war to engage in wholesale ethnic cleansing to “Germanize” the whole region.

That goal was known to Czech resistance based in London and for reasons both political and military, wished to do something to encourage acts of disobedience, despite knowing the consequences that would be visited upon the population.  The British authorities did nothing to discourage this view and believed resistance in occupied territories was a vital element in their plan to “set Europe ablaze” with ferment against Nazi rule.  Accordingly, a team of London-based Czech assassins was assembled and smuggled back into Prague with the audacious plan to assassinate Heydrich.  Code-named Operation Anthropoid (a word translated variously as (1) a non-human creature with some of the physical characteristics of a human or (2) a creature with the characteristics of an ape), Heydrich made their task easier because, so assured did he think was his pacification of his domain that routinely he was driven to his office in an un-armored, open-top car with no escort or security detail.

The aftermath.   A 320 Cabriolet B reputed to be this car now sits in a museum in Denmark.

On 27 May, 1942, the two Czech operatives waited at a corner where the Mercedes-Benz cabriolet had to slow to negotiate a tight turn and although mechanical failures meant Operation Anthropoid didn’t go to plan, the wounds which finally killed Heydrich were inflicted by a grenade.  The tossed grenade actually missed ending up in the rear compartment where the target was sat and instead exploded outside, just ahead of the right-side rear wheel.  What happened was shrapnel from the device passed through the cushion of the rear seat and entered Heydrich’s torso and it’s believed it took with it some of the horsehair used as the upholstery’s bombast.  The most common theory to account for his death (nine days after the blast) is the horsehair caused a systemic infection, trigging sepsis and putting his body into shock.  For the Czechs, the consequences were severe with the deaths and deportations in the thousands and never again did the Czechoslovak government-in-exile order such an operation.  In his honor, the programme to exterminate Polish Jews in the General Government district of German-occupied Poland was named Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard) and this was the start of what came to be called “the Holocaust”.  The circumstances of the loss of a man he regarded as “irreplaceable” appalled Hitler who found inexplicable the idea his representative would travel around occupied territory unescorted and in an un-armored, open-top car.  Accordingly, Mercedes-Benz was commissioned to build a run of armoured sedans to be allocated to the Nazi party.  This included the last 20 770Ks (W150, 1938-1943) and 37 two-door 540Ks (W29, 1936-1940) built on the already completed chassis and delivered between 1942-1944.

Bluster (pronounced bluhs-ter)

(1) Noisy, swaggering, empty threats or protests; inflated talk (often in the phrase “bluff and bluster”).

(2) Boisterous noise and violence.

(3) Of the wind, noisy; gusty; tumultuous.

(4) To speak or say loudly or boastfully

(5) To act in a bullying way

(6) To force or attempt to force (a person) into doing something by behaving thus

1520-1530: From the Middle English blusteren (aimlessly to wander about), the modern sense perhaps gained from the Middle Low German blustern & blüstern (to blow violently) (which may be compared with the later Low German blustern & blistern).  The obviously related words were blow and blast and it seems likely there was some connection with the East Frisian blüstern (to bluster), the Old Norse blāstr (blowing, hissing) and the Saterland Frisian bloasje (to blow) & bruusje (to bluster).  In English, the use in the context of the weather had emerged by at least the 1540s and the sense of bluster being “a storm of violent wind” (directly from the circa 1400 verb) was in general use by the 1580s.  The meaning “noisy, boisterous, inflated talk” appeared in print in 1704 but may long have been in oral use.  The adjective blustery dates from the 1730s and seems to be used first of persons in the sense of “noisy, swaggering” and may not have been applied to the weather (rough & stormy) for some decades.  Bluster is a noun & verb, blusterer, blusteration & blustrification are nouns, blustering is a noun, verb & adjective, blustered is a verb, blustersome, blusterous, blustery & blustery are adjectives and blusterously & blusteringly are adverbs; the noun plural is blusters.

Wind-blown: Lindsay Lohan at the beach on a blustery day.

Blustering was in use by the 1510s to imply “someone stormy or tempestuous” and by the 1650s it was applied to “boastful, swaggering people”.  In the (possibly co-authored) Pericles, Prince of Tyre (circa 1608), William Shakespeare (1564–1616) uses blusterous: “Now may your life be mild, for a blusterous birth had never babe!” (Act 3, Scene 1) and of course in Coriolanus and Sir John Falstaff he created archetypes of the loud, swaggering blustering character.  Bluster’s synonyms include boast, brag & rant.  There are a remarkable number of phrases meaning much the same thing as “all bluff and bluster” (full of talk but lacking substance) including: “all bark and no bite”, “all foam, no beer”, “all fur coat and no knickers”, “all garnish and no meat”, “all hat and no cattle, “all icing, no cake”, “all lime and salt, no tequila”, “all mouth and no trousers”, “all shot, no powder”, “all show, no go, “all sizzle and no steak and “all talk and no action”.

Bombast and bluster are much associated with politicians although, if anything, those tendencies are now seen less as the trend from at least the mid-twentieth century has been towards simplicity and repetition (the most effective form clearly believed to be the 3WS (three word slogan)).  In political rhetoric however, bombast and bluster did have a long and sometimes ignoble history and among critics the terms often were used interchangeably because, despite the subtle differences in meaning, very often there’d be elements of both in the one speech.  They are different faults: Bombast refers to inflated, grandiose, pompous language. The criticism is that the speaker's words are overly elaborate or impressive-sounding relative to their actual substance; after listening for a while to some of Winston Churchill’s (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) carefully crafted phrases, Aneurin “Nye” Bevan (1897–1960) responded by saying: “The majesty of his words conceals the poverty of his thoughts.”.  Bluster is different in that it refers to loud, aggressive, boastful, or threatening talk, often with the implication there is more noise than action.  Bluster is a label applied to the speaker's swaggering manner rather than their vocabulary or phraseology.  So, bombast is a thing of style & language while bluster is about tone and attitude but there are many instances of speeches contain both bombast (grandiose language) with bluster (aggressive attitude); the preferred collective term is “hot air”.  That of course reflects the different etymology, bombast (originally “padding or stuffing” in its figurative sense meaning “stuffed excessively with words” while bluster (originally of stormy wind conditions) suggesting “noisy or overbearing speech”.  So, in as few words as possible: bombast is verbal inflation; bluster is verbal intimidation.

Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) at the UN, September 2025.

Mr Trump often is described as “bombastic” but that really is a misuse, albeit a common one among those commenting on politics and politicians.  Whether or not one concurs with his views, Mr Trump usually expresses himself in commendably succinct terms which readily can be understood by most, eschewing the use of long, unusual or obscure words.  It’s an example of how the meaning of bombast has shifted but what critics really mean to say is Mr Trump is inclined to bluster and prone to exaggerate; he does not however “pad out” his sentences with decorative phrases or words inserted mere to prove his erudition.  Instead, his language is direct and simple and while someone like the classically educated Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) sometimes couldn’t resist delighting at least some in his audience with the odd linguistic flourish, Mr Trump likes simple, punchy words and some fragments from his address to the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) in September 2025 illustrate his approach: “One year ago, our country was in deep trouble.  But today, just eight months into my administration, we're the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close.”; “This is the greatest administration in US history.  We have strongest borders, military and relationships around the world.”; “What is the purpose of the United Nations?  It has such tremendous, tremendous potential.  But it's not even coming close to living up to that potential.  For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly-worded letter and then never follow that letter up.  It's empty words and empty words don't solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”; “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements.”; “Europe has to step it up.  They can't be doing what they're doing.  They're buying oil and gas from Russia while they're fighting Russia.  It's embarrassing to them.”; “Not only is the UN not solving the problems it should, too often it's actually creating new problems for us to solve.  The best example is the No. 1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. It's uncontrolled. Your countries are being ruined.  Your countries are going to hell.”; “Climate change is the greatest con job ever.  If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”  There are grounds on which Mr Trump can be criticized but he uses plain, simple words and his meaning is always clear and that approach may be compared with that of Kamala Harris (b 1964; VPOTUS 2021-2025), his opponent in the 2024 election and it wasn't only Fox News that liked to describe her speech as a “word salad”.  In fairness, what Ms Harris did wouldn’t have met the clinical threshold of what in psychiatry used to be called schizophasia (a severe form of disorganized speech consisting of a confused, unintelligible mixture of seemingly random, unconnected words and phrases; while the words themselves may be grammatically correct, they lack logical or semantic meaning, making the speech impossible for a listener to understand) but it could be a challenge to gain meaning from her words.  At least Joe Biden (b 1942; VPOTUS 2009-2017 and POTUS 2021-2025) had an excuse for his mumbling and incoherence; he was senile.

Bellwether

Bellwether (pronounced bel-weth-er)

(1) A wether or other male sheep that leads the flock, usually bearing a bell.

(2) A person or thing that assumes the leadership or forefront, as of a profession or industry.

(3) Anything that indicates future trends (gauge, indicator, sign).

(4) As “bellwether state”, “bellwether seat” etc, an electoral division or constituency which, over a long period, has tended to predict the outcome in wider electoral contests (presidential, congressional, provincial, national etc).

(5) In finance, as “bellwether stock”, a stock or bond widely believed to be an indicator of the overall market's condition and future direction.

1400-1450: The construct was bell + wether.  The late thirteenth century word clearly existed in Anglo-Latin but in the late twelfth century it had been used as a surname.  The prevalent meaning became “lead sheep” (with a collar on which a bell was hung) of a domesticated flock, while the figurative sense (leader, chief) dates from the mid-fourteenth century.  Used in its original sense (a sheep with a bell attached to a collar), bellwether has no synonyms but they do exist when the term figuratively is applied (a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend; index), including trendsetter, trailblazer, front runner, pacesetter, leader, omen, gauge, indicator, sign & harbinger.  Thus in fashion, historically, the bellwether has tended variously to be what was first seen on the catwalks in Milan, Paris or London while in the years immediately after World War II (1939-1945), it was the artistic movements in New York rather than Paris that became the bellwether of global directions in the visual arts.  The alternative forms were bell-wether and (the now archaic) belwether; bellweather was a misspelling.  Bellwether is a noun; the noun plural is bellwethers.

A model in a “strapless fuchsia top and pants covered in shimmering, sculpted rose embellishments” from Rahul Mishra’s (b 1979) Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2025/2026 collection (Becoming Love), Paris Fashion Week, 2025.  Paris remains the industry’s bellwether but not everything seen on the catwalk is a harbinger.

Bell, in the sense of the percussive, hollow instrument (usually of cast or forged metal), typically cup-shaped with a flaring mouth, suspended from the vertex and rung by the strokes of a clapper, hammer, or the like (resonating upon impact producing “the sound of the bell”), was a pre-1000 word, from the Middle English belle, from the Old English belle & bellan (to roar), from the from Proto-West Germanic bellā, from the Proto-Germanic bellǭ, from the primitive Indo-European bel-; it was cognate with the West Frisian belle, the Old High German bellan, the Low German Belle & Bel, the German bellen (to bark), the Middle Dutch bellen & belen, the Old Norse belja, the Danish bjælde, the Faroese bjølla, the Icelandic bjalla, the Norwegian bjelle and the Swedish bjällra. and the Dutch bel.

Wether (originally “a castrated male sheep” but later used generally of “male sheep”) dates from pre 900 and was from the Middle English wether, wethir & wedyr, from the Old English weðer (ram), from the Middle English wether, wethir, wedyr, from Old English weþer (“a wether, ram”), from the Proto-West Germanic weþru, from the Proto-Germanic wethruz (source also of the Old Saxon wethar, the Old Norse veðr, the Old High German widar, the German Widder and the Gothic wiþrus (lamb)), literally “yearling’, from the primitive Indo-European root wet- (year), (source also of the Sanskrit vatsah (calf), the Greek etalon (yearling) and the Latin vitulus (calf, literally “yearling”); it was cognate with the Old Saxon withar, the Old High German widar, the Old Norse vethr and the Gothic withrus.  The ultimate source was the primitive Indo-European wet- (year).  The word wether came to be used both of male sheep (rams) and male goats (busks) castrated at a young age.  Usually, it’s safe practice for wethers to share paddocks or be housed with female sheep or goats, but intact rams & bucks usually are kept separately.  “Wether wool” was wool from previously shorn sheep.  The now obsolete dialectal form was wedder and in historic documents, as late as the nineteenth century wether was a (now archaic) spelling of weather.  Used as a verb, “to wether” was to castrate a male sheep or goat, the victim said to have been “wethered”.

In idiomatic use, a “bellwether state” “bellwether district” or “bellwether seat” is an electoral division or constituency which, over a long period, has tended to align with the outcome in wider electoral contests (presidential, congressional, provincial, national etc).  The classic example is the bellwether state in US presidential elections that historically votes for the winning candidate in successive elections (ie sometimes returning a Democratic and sometimes a Republican majority).  It’s an accepted part of the jargon of political science but really doesn’t adhere to the etymology of the original idea of sheep “following a leader”.  In elections, one state, district or constituency generally doesn’t “follow another” because votes tend simultaneously to be cast and although there are examples (in countries with multiple time-zones) of early results in one place become available while polling is still happening in others, (1) those results are always from a very small proportion of the vote (2) most votes in places still voting have already been cast and (3) the time overlap usually is brief.

A Lindsay Lohan-themed weathervane.

In the political context, rather than bellwether, a better term might be “weather vane”.  A weather vane is a type of anemoscope (the construct being anemo- (from the Ancient Greek ᾰ̓́νεμος (ắnemos) (wind)) + scope (from the Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō) (examine, inspect, look to or into, consider)) which is an elegant description of a simple, mechanical device rotating around one axis and attached to an elevated object such as a roof.  As a weather vane responds to the wind, it rotates to show the wind direction, the letters “N”, “S”, “E” & “W” displayed on static, extended prongs indicating respectively north, south, east & west.  The term is sometimes clipped to “vane” and they’re known also as “wind vanes” and “weathercocks”, the latter use dating from so many historically being formed in the silhouette of a rooster.  The reason “weather vane” works better than “bellwether” as a word indicating “current political climate” is that there’s no suggestion the wind “follows” the vane; instead, the position of the vane simply reflects the direction in which “the wind is blowing”.  That’s why it can be used to mean (1) an indicator; something that reflects what the current situation is and (2) a person or organization that changes their attitude and position based on the prevailing conditions rather than displaying any conviction.

So while a homophone, “weather” enjoys a different meaning from “wether”.  Weather was from the Middle English weder & wedir, from the Old English weder, from the Proto-West Germanic wedr, from the Proto-Germanic wedrą, from the primitive Indo-European wedrom (to blow).  The distinction between “the weather” and “the climate” is the former is the state of the atmosphere at a specific time and place (expressed via measures such as temperature, relative humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind strength etc) while the latter is the weather aggregated over periods (which can be a season, year, decade, century, epoch etc) or regions.  Such is the significance of the weather that the term “the weather” can refer explicitly to its more severe aspects.  That’s how Guadalcanal's Weather Coast in the Solomon Islands gained its name; unlike the island's northern coast (site of the capital Honiara), the southern Weather Coast faces the prevailing southeast trade winds and open ocean swells.  As a result, it experiences heavier rainfall, rougher seas, flooding, and generally harsher weather; it’s literally the island’s “weather-beaten coast”.

Vane was from the Middle English vane, a Southern Middle English variant of fane, from the Old English fana (cloth, banner, flag), from the Proto-West Germanic fanō, from the Proto-Germanic fanô, from the primitive Indo-European pehn- (something woven; weave; tissue; fabric; cloth).  It was cognate with the Saterland Frisian Foone (flag, banner), the Dutch vaan (banner, flag), the German Low German Fahn (flag) and the German Fahne.  In engineering, vanes typically exist in multiples and are relatively thin, rigid, flat, or sometimes curved surfaces radially mounted along an axis; they can be slow-moving (as on a windmill) or run at very high speeds (as in turbines).  In ornithology, the vane is the flattened, web-like part of a feather, consisting of a series of barbs on either side of the shaft.

A captured German V2 rocket (1945, left) and a full-size clay mock up of a design proposal for 1961 Cadillac, General Motors Technical Center, Warren, Michigan, (1959, right).  When the V2 used as a weapon (1944-1945), the term used was "fins" but the rocket scientists of the 1950s popularized "vanes".  On the cars, it was always "fins" but the lower units (seen on Oldsmobiles in 1961 and Cadillacs in 1961-1962) informally were dubbed "skegs", a borrowing from nautical architecture.

A recent adoption of vane was to describe the guidance or stabilizing fins attached to the tail of bombs or missiles.  Fins had of course long been a feature of directional weapons (arrows the classic example) and they’d appeared on the earliest aerial bombs.  Had the convention been: “fins are static and vanes can move” that would have made sense to laypersons but that wasn’t the way the military-industrial complex used the labels which resulted in non-specialist writers sometimes using “fin” and “vane” interchangeably.  That was understandable because while in the terminology of aerodynamicists the words are not exactly synonymous, there’s enough overlap to encourage confusion.  As a general principle, the primary purpose of a fin is to act as a stabilizing surface enhancing stability, the tail fins on a bomb, artillery shell, rocket, or missile the classic examples; until relatively recently, almost always they were fixed.  By contrast, a vane is a thin blade-like aerodynamic surface that interacts with airflow; they may be static or movable and are used for stabilization, steering or control.  To engineers the distinction was significant and for others it made sense because the nerdier "vane" was for rocket scientists while fins were things Detroit was putting on Cadillacs.  That meant some vanes could move while others were fixed and were thus functionally equivalent to fins.  Except for historians of such things, any distinction probably isn’t important and the two are so entrenched in ordnance and aerospace nomenclature, they’re both here to stay; in modern use the only discernible definitional difference being some emphasis on the component’s shape rather than whether it moves.

Map of the US expressed as "Red", "Blue", "Bellwether" & "Swing" states.  The apparent red-blue dichotomy is a product of the voting system, the vote spread broadly similar to patterns in other two-party systems.

Electoral behaviour in the democracies of the English-speaking world is not as predictable as it was in the days of relatively stable two-party systems.  Even in the US where the Democratic and Republican party machines have ensured there’s something of an institutionalized duopoly, their internal fissiparousness of both (TEA (Taxed Enough Already) & MAGA (Make America Great Again) etc) has made the use of historic data less useful.  What does seem clear is among the “less useful” concepts in the US are the “bellwethers”, states or districts that historically were remarkably reliable in picking winners in national elections.  In presidential contests, some were striking in this: Nevada between 2012-2020 voted for the winner in every election (except 1976) and Missouri did the same between 1904- 2004 except in 1956.  Much maligned Ohio was once also a Bellwether; between choosing a loser in Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) in 1964 and crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947) in 2016, Ohioans otherwise got it right.

Map of the US expressed as "Purple" states.

Political scientists explain the change by pointing out the electorate, geographically, has become much more polarized, states now increasingly sorted by education level, urbanization, ethnicity, and partisan identity.  Once consequence of this was previously competitive states can drift permanently into one party's column, thus the growing number of “Red” (Republican) and “Blue” (Democrat) states and although psephologists have published district-by-district analyses showing all states really are “shades of purple”, because of the way the electoral system works in the US, the shades don’t matter because mostly the delegates in the Electoral College are determined on “winner takes all” basis.  Thus it’s correct to speak of “red” and “blue” states and the “winner takes all” approach does distort political perceptions; were a system of proportional representation (or even a preferential system) to be adopted, the electoral outcomes would be very different on the basis of the same patterns of voting.  What this shift in behaviour has meant is political scientists tend now to focus less on the historic bellwethers and more on the “tipping-point states” (the relative handful of "swing" states which have evolved to be the most competitive and thus likely to be decisive in provides the needed Electoral College votes).  In recent elections, the tipping point states have been Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Because there are more of them, in Congressional elections, the notion of “bellwether districts” remains more useful but even there it has become diluted.  Historically, there were literally dozens of House districts that routinely elected a representative from whichever party won the national House vote and in a real (ie statistically verifiable) sense such districts really did reflected “the median American voter”, a concept now less identifiable.  What has happened is that the forces of geographic polarization, partisan realignment, residential self-sorting and the decline of split-ticket voting means the number of genuine bellwether districts dramatically has shrunk, a stark change from the trend first identified in the late 1990s of the number of “safe seats” decreasing.  Concurrent with that has been the movement in the number of House districts carried by one presidential candidate but represented by the other party in Congress.  In the 1970s and 1980s there were hundreds of such mismatches while today there are but a handful with many congressional districts effectively “safe” for one party or the other; now it’s only “reprehensible or extraordinary circumstances” (they can be local or national) likely to shift things.  While it’s true there are a small number of competitive districts (in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan) that have in recent elections been reliable bellwethers, there seems among political scientists little confidence these can be guaranteed to maintain the pattern.  The bellwethers “happened” because there was for at least decades a large “middle ground” of persuadable “swing voters” distributed throughout the country but modern American (and this predates Donald Trump (b 1946; POTUS 2017-2021 and since 2025) who does get blamed for much) politics increasingly is characterized by semi-stable partisan coalitions and fewer swing voters.  So, “bellwethers” are now quite likely to be temporary coincidences rather than a durable phenomenon so the predictive power of the concept is now much weaker.

1968 Holden HK Monaro GTS 327.

The In Australian federal elections, the seat most recently dubbed a “bellwether” was the NSW (New South Wales) division of Eden Monaro (established in 1900), its good burghers for four decades reliability voting for the party destined to take office.  Between 1972-2013, Eden-Monaro was won by the party winning the general election and in another quirk unusual over such a long period (and uniquely among Australia’s historic bellwethers), none of the sitting members retired, resigned or had the decency to drop dead; all were defeated on polling day.  The Monaro region lies in what was the traditional country of the Ngarigo people and “Monaro” was said to be was from the Aboriginal word maneroo, most often translated as meaning “treeless plain”, “high plain” or “high plateau” although the APH (Parliamentary Handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia) lists the alternative etymology as an “Aboriginal word meaning 'the navel' or 'a woman's breasts'.”

Marlboro cigarette magazine advertisement, 1967.  There was a time when such imagery was thought "positive product association".

In the early years of colonial settlement, the word often was spelled “Manaro” but the pronunciation is believed always to have been me-nair-oh.  Despite that long history, when in 1968 GMH (General Motors Holdens, GM’s local operation) introduced the Monaro, the pronunciation used was mon-ah-ro and that was attributed to events far away.  The choice of name is attributed to one of GMH’s technical designers in 1967 driving through Cooma and seeing the sign “Monaro County Council”.  At the time, there had been no decision about a name for the new Holden coupé (the body style a first for the company) and what appealed to the designer was (1) the sign reminding him of the famous “Marlboro Country” cigarette advertisements (then much admired) and (2) the obvious similarity with “Camaro”, the “pony car” introduced that year by Chevrolet as a competitor for Ford’s wildly successful Mustang.  Apparently, when “Monaro” was suggested as a name, instead of a committee being formed in the usual corporate way, so things could be “discussed”, immediately the name was adopted.  Although the Camaro (pronounced kam-ah-ro) wasn’t then sold in the Australian market, it had been well-publicized so Holden taking advantage of the “linguistic association” was not surprising.

1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS-SS 396.

That was a decision more quickly made than the process at Chevrolet which produced Camaro which emerged from a committee after the alternatives had been considered and discarded.  These days, conjuring up novel words for products (as well as product differentiation it avoids any legal squabbles) is common but in the mid-1960s, GM must not have wanted to risk being accused of linguistic impurity so told the press there was an entry in a (very) old French-English dictionary defining camaro as “companion”. “comrade” or “friend”.  Mischievously, Ford retaliated with a more recent Spanish dictionary in which a camaro was listed as a “small shrimp-like creature”, provoking Chevrolet into responding that a camaro was “a small, vicious animal that eats Mustangs”.  In the same era, that carnivorous notion really was the basis of the name of the de Tomaso Mangusta (Mongoose, 1967-1971), chosen after Alejandro de Tomaso (1928-2003) and Carroll Shelby (1923–2012) had a falling out, explained by the mongoose being a beast famous for hunting and killing cobras.  Unfortunately, the legend about the origin of the Camaro’s name is thought a myth, Chevrolet just “making it up” at a time when the company was using model names starting with “C” (Corvair, Corvette, Chevelle, Caprice) and the story of a journalist unearthing yet another dictionary that disclosed the definition “loose bowels” wholly is a myth.