puffed up with vanity; "a grandiloquent and boastful manner"; "overblown oratory"; "a pompous speech"; "pseudo-scientific gobbledygook and pontifical hooey"- Newsweek
lofty in style; "he engages in so much tall talk, one never really realizes what he is saying"
concerned with effect or style of writing and speaking; "a rhetorical question is one asked solely to produce an effect (especially to make an assertion) rather than to elicit a reply"
of or relating to rhetoric; "accepted two or three verbal and rhetorical changes I suggested"- W.A.White; "the rhetorical sin of the meaningless variation"- Lewis Mumford
making claim to or creating an appearance of (often undeserved) importance or distinction; "a pretentious country house"; "a pretentious fraud"; "a pretentious scholarly edition"
not liable to error in judgment or action; "most surefooted of the statesmen who dealt with the depression"- Walter Lippman; "demonstrates a surefooted storytelling talent"- Michiko Kakutani
having or marked by confidence or assurance; "a confident speaker"; "a confident reply"; "his manner is more confident these days"; "confident of fulfillment"
presumptuously arrogant; "had a witty but overweening manner"; "no idea how overweening he would be"- S.V.Benet; "getting a little uppity and needed to be slapped down"- NY Times