high-sounding

English

Adjective

high-sounding (comparative more high-sounding, superlative most high-sounding)

1. Having an elevated or moralistic tone; pompous.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter X, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 111:

     The glittering crowd, whose high-sounding names ever and anon reached her ear—the magnificent room—the splendour of the dresses—the diamonds shining amid the elaborately curled tresses she had been accustomed to see in their native darkness, their summer ornament the half-blown rose, and their winter-wreath the myrtle-branch—all oppressed her with the sense of change.

   • 1940 December, “"Rail Fan" Trips in the U.S.A.”, in Railway Magazine, page 652:

     The fourth picture represents a trip over the New York, Ontario and Western Railway—one of the many relatively small independent lines which still operates in the United States, with a typically high-sounding title, for the system concerned, though it taps Lake Ontario, does not touch New York (though it lies partly in New York State), and is confined entirely to the Eastern States.

2. Oratorial, sometimes to the point of sounding contrived.

References

• “high-sounding”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.