pontificate

Related to pontificate: dogmatic, trenchant

pontificate on (something)

To speak about some issue in a particularly pompous, pretentious, or imperious manner. The principal lined us all up in the room and pontificated on the importance of hard work and discipline. It feels like we can't get through a single day in the office without my manager pontificating on how much better things were when she was first starting out in the industry.
See also: on, pontificate
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

pontificate on something

to speak and act dogmatically and pompously. Must you pontificate on your own virtues so much? The speaker was pontificating on the virtues of a fat-free diet.
See also: on, pontificate
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.
See also:
  • pontificate on
  • pontificate on (something)
  • think (one) owns the place
  • think you own the place
  • strut out of
  • strut out of (some place)
  • strut in
  • strut out
  • strut into
  • strut around
References in periodicals archive
Francis obviously wanted to emphasize that he sees dialogue between Muslims and Christians as very important for his pontificate. The way he chooses the countries he travels to can point us to important issues that are high on his agenda.
The essays in this fine volume take various vantage points on Alexander's pontificate. John Doran explores the Roman context, taking his prompt from the fact that Alexander spent only about thirty-six months in Rome during a pontificate of twenty-one years.
Francis affirms the theology of the council and unites to it in an inseparable way, effectively giving his pontificate greater reach, both backward and forward.
The comparatively short pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI was not free from storm.
This volume consists of a collection of essays written by leading ecumenists from diverse Christian traditions, who were charged with a basic task: to explore how the personal experience and theological vision of Joseph Ratzinger would influence the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.
Most of the essays in this welcome collection had their origin in papers presented at sessions on the pontificate of Clement VII, organized by the editors, Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E.
JUSTICE Minister Calamity Jamieson can pontificate all she likes about rooting out drug barons and gangsters.
If you've heard Gerecht pontificate on the Middle East, you might find his views a little more hawkish than your own.
His pontificate was shaped by the need to confront a wide range of problems including heresy, perceived threats from Islam and the Orthodox Church as well as the institutional crisis of the church's failure to meet the changing spiritual needs of lay society.
But the point--and the beauty--of this is not that we get pontificate or otherwise hold forth, but that you get to communicate with a group of like-minded people who are part of the auto industry.
During a recent conversation, I presented the following question to Deloria and asked him to pontificate: If the world was formed by a series of catastrophes, and the memories of ancients are interwoven into the numerous myths that scientists avoid, what are these scientists over-looking as far as the possibility of truths about our earth?
Written over the last several months, the provisionally titled 'The Rome Triptych: The Meditations of John Paul II' will be the first book of poems to be published by the Pope since the start of his pontificate in 1978.
One of the more richly satisfying experiences in life is to see a pontificator caught up in a real situation where he can no longer pontificate, but must participate.
It signals that the United States wants to pontificate and at the same time play by its own rules.
The legislation's provisions and possible shortcomings are the stuff for pundits to pontificate on, though history will be the ultimate arbiter.