Pretentious Language Quotes

Never use jargon words like 'reconceptualize', 'demassification', 'attitudinally', 'judgmentally'. They are hallmarks of a pretentious ass.

He spoke in a big bow-wow style of oratory. His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.

The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth.

Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.

But if you tell folks you're a college student, folks are so impressed. You can be a student in anything and not have to know anything. Just say toxicology or marine biokinesis, and the person you're talking to will change the subject to himself. If this doesn't work, mention the neural synapses of embryonic pigeons.

You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense.

To conceal a want of real ideas, many make for themselves an imposing apparatus of long compound words, intricate flourishes and phrases, new and unheard-of expressions, all of which together furnish an extremely difficult jargon that sounds very learned. Yet with all this they say-precisely nothing.

Use the word 'zeitgeist' as often as possible. Ideally, you want to find words that sound familiar but people don't really know their definitions: 'zeitgeist,' 'bildungsroman,' 'doppelganger' - better yet, anything Latin. But avoid 'paradigm.' It's so 1994. If you say the word 'paradigm,' everybody knows you're a poser.

A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words.