pomp
/pɒmp
/noun [mass noun]
1Ceremony and splendid display: entertaining overseas visitors with the right degree of pomp...
- The celebration was a grand display of pomp and circumstance led by the students of the school.
- The very first episode shows a Europe immersed in the grandeur of pomp and circumstance.
- The event took place with a flourish of military pomp and ceremony, and army officers wore black armbands in memory of the Queen Mother.
Synonyms
ceremony, ceremoniousness, ceremonial, solemnity, ritual, display, spectacle, pageantry, pageant;
show, showiness, ostentation, splendour, grandeur, grandness, magnificence, majesty, stateliness, glory, gloriousness, sumptuousness, opulence, lavishness, richness, brilliance, radiance, dazzle, theatricality, drama, flourish, glitter, style, éclat, resplendence, splendidness
informal pizzazz, razzle-dazzle, razzmatazz
1.1 (also pomps) archaic Vain and ostentatious display: I perceived Captain Delmar, in all the pomp and pride of full uniform...
- In a sense the tricolour had been colonised by a small grouping bringing murder and mayhem in their wake and such was the antipathy of the general population to the Provos and all their pomps that the national flag was almost sidelined.
- It is time to call its bluff and close down the entire trough by abolishing the Arts Council and all its works and pomps.
- All the hideous excrescences that have overgrown our modern life, the pomps and conventions and dreary solemnities, dread nothing so much as the flash of laughter which, like lightning, shrivels them up and leaves the bones bare.
Origin
Middle English: from Old French pompe, via Latin from Greek pompē 'procession, pomp', from pempein 'send'.