Synonyms for pontifical
adj pertaining to popefustian
papal
pompous
- affected
- bloated
- boastful
- bombastic
- conceited
- flatulent
- flaunting
- flowery
- fustian
- grandiloquent
- grandiose
- high and mighty
- high-flown
- highfaluting
- imperious
- important
- inflated
- magisterial
- magniloquent
- narcissistic
- orotund
- ostentatious
- overbearing
- overblown
- pontifical
- portentous
- presumptuous
- pretentious
- puffed up
- puffy
- rhetorical
- self-centered
- self-important
- selfish
- showy
- sonorous
- stuck-up
- supercilious
- turgid
- uppity
- vain
- vainglorious
- windy
Word Origin & History
early 15c., from Middle French pontifical and directly from Latin pontificalis "of or pertaining to the high priest," from pontifex (see pontifex). Hence pontificalia "trappings of a bishop."
Example Sentences forpontifical
There was much of the Pontifical in me, for I was a rapt radical.
I offer a friend a bottle of '44 claret, fit for a pontifical supper.
Claude assumed the majestic and pontifical attitude of a Samuel.
Everything about him became, as it were, pontifical, almost sacramental.
But a railway the subjects of the Pontifical Government cannot have.
I am writing treatises on augural, pontifical, and civil law.
Before him are borne the triple crown and other Pontifical ornaments.
He felt that he could not argue with the pontifical zouave of bygone days.
Tristan began to note the evidences of life in the Pontifical City.
Not all the troops in the Pontifical states could have taken me.