Definition of "high-sounding" []

• Pretentiously impressive; pompous: high-sounding oratory. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Touch his silly vanity, which he exalts into high-sounding pride — call him a liar, and behold the red animal in him that makes a hand clutching that is quick like the tensing of a tiger's claw, or an eagle's talon, incarnate with desire to rip and tear."
• "He has taken a noble and high-sounding Fijian name and dragged it in the dirt to suit his nefarious purposes."
• "As the Garzon situation demonstrates (and I think EPosner has it right), Garzon was simply seeing what he could get away with vis-a-vis “universal jurisdiction” and so long as his targets matched the wish lists of various members of the academic international law community, they did everything they could to enable his politics with high-sounding pronouncements as to the QED “legality” of his course of action."