derived from experiment and observation rather than theory; "an empirical basis for an ethical theory"; "empirical laws"; "empirical data"; "an empirical treatment of a disease about which little is known"
characterized by oppressive heat and humidity; "the summer was sultry and oppressive"; "the stifling atmosphere"; "the sulfurous atmosphere preceding a thunderstorm"
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