Rodomontade

''Rodomontade'' () is a mass noun meaning boastful talk or behavior. The term is a reference to Rodomonte, a character in the Italian Renaissance epic poem ''Orlando innamorato'' and its sequel ''Orlando furioso''.

Henry Fielding in ''History of Tom Jones'' writes, “In fact, the good squire was a little too apt to indulge that kind of pleasantry which is generally called rhodomontade. . .”

Examples of use

*A 17th-century example of the term exists in ''Don Tomazo'' by Thomas Dangerfield, albeit with a slight alteration of spelling. As the titular protagonist heads towards Cairo with a number of stolen treasures, he is informed by an acquaintance that:
::''. . . he could, in that heathenish city, command a thousand pound – which was at that time no rodomontado, in regard the jewels were worth above four times the value.''

*The German composer Georg Philipp Telemann composed a Suite in b minor (in German, h moll) for violin solo, strings and continuo (TWV 55: h4), which ends with a piece named "Rodomontade".
*A 19th-century example of the use of the term can be found in ''The Adventures of Captain Bonneville'' by Washington Irving. Irving used it to describe the behavior of "free trappers", fur trappers who worked freelance and adopted the manner, habits, and dress of the native Americans. When free trappers visited Bonneville's camp, he welcomed them and ordered grog for everyone:
::''They he free trapperspronounced the captain the finest fellow in the world, and his men all ''bon garçons'', jovial lads, and swore they would pass the day with them. They did so, and a day it was, of boast, and swagger, and ''rodomontade''.''

*Another 19th-century example can be found in Thomas Carlyle's 1829 essay ''Signs of the Times'':
::''We have more Mathematics than ever; but less Mathesis. Archimedes and Plato could not have read the Mécanique Céleste; but neither would the whole French Institute see aught in that saying, "God geometrises!" but a sentimental rodomontade.''

* In the English translation of Natsume Soseki's novel, ''I am a Cat'' (1905-1906), when referring to the feline character Rickshaw Blacky: ''"Blacky, like all true braggarts, is somewhat weak in the head. As long as you purr and listen attentively, pretending to be impressed by his rhodomontade, he is a more or less manageable cat.”''
* "For surely, had Lucinda heard aught of the story of the duel, it would have been her first thing to speak of, not all this rhodomontade of silly necromancies." - from the novel ''An Affair of Dishonour'' (1910) by William De Morgan.
* Rex Stout uses it in the second Nero Wolfe novel, "The League of Frightened Men" (1935), when Wolfe says, "If Mr. Chapin had ... restrained his impulse to rodomontade ..."
*The word, with its alternative spelling (rhodomontade) is quoted in John Lukacs' book ''Five Days in London May 1940''. While describing the tempestuous days of Churchill's first weeks in office, Lukacs quotes Alexander Cadogan, a bureaucrat with the Foreign Office, counselling Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax who was complaining that he could no longer work with Churchill. Cadogan said:
::''Nonsense: his rhodomontades probably bore you as much as they do me, but don't do anything silly under the stress of that.''

* Hannah Arendt describes Adolf Eichmann

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