I know it’s creepy, but sometimes I sit alone laughing to myself.

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I did so just now when I came across the following Urbandictionary definition of the word pompous: “a big word used to criticize big words.”

It works doesn’t it?

Here’s what The Oxford Dictionary of English says: “affectedly grand, solemn, or self-important.”

So a pompous ass is someone who acts in a puffed up way.

The word itself has had enough self confidence to have held its meaning in English since Geoffrey Chaucer first pulled it from French and set it down in English in 1375. As with many French words pompous comes from Latin.

It shows up in slightly different form when we talk about the pomp and ceremony surrounding a royal wedding or the swearing of an oath of office. In both cases the root pomp holds a sense of “formality”; in the case of pompous it’s just that the formality inappropriate.

In Classical Latin pompa was a “ceremonial procession” and the word was taken from Greek where this formal parade was likely first associated with saying formal goodbyes and sending someone away in style. The Greek root meant “to send.”

That first English use of pompous by Geoffrey Chaucer certainly referred to someone’s puffed up ego, but curiously that someone was sent away in style as well.

Chaucer writes “Was neuere capitayn vnder a kyng..Ne moore pompous in heigh presumpcioun Than Oloferne.”

Oloferne, or Holophernes, he paid for his pompousness too.

The sending-off-in-style that I mentioned was done by the biblical Judith.

Holophernes was an avenging general sent by his Assyrian king to smack down those pompous people who hadn’t supported him in his drive world domination. Holophernes was holding a town under siege and one evening this lovely woman comes by his tent and they proceed to have a merry old time.

What fun, drinking and cavorting, until Judith decided Holophernes had had enough to drink and it was time to decapitate him.

Thus endeth the siege.