Word: windbags
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...Speaker was invoking an old rule which provides that a word or phrase once officially banned in parliamentary debate cannot be used again. As a result, no M.P. can call another a bonehead, windbag, twister or underfed dwarf, say he lacks guts or intestinal fortitude, describe his speech as ballyhoo, cant and humbug, or cheap and nasty...
...able to let themselves go for the first time since V-J day, to go out and do the things they always wanted to do. The little man was able to park his car in front of a meter and keep his pennies; he was able to punch that windbag who lives upstairs right in the mush without fear of retribution; he was able to speak his unclean mind, and look smugly at his luminous watch dial. The little man was able to let off steam, to show haughty contempt for the forces of stratified authority. Tomorrow, the little...
...bound volumes of press-clippings and his published writings. I, as one, would like to know why a man so intelligent and civilized as Mencken would aggressively support the Germans in the early part of both World Wars; would call Bernard Shaw, his model for iconoclasm, "a great windbag full of platitudes"; would accept the starvation-deaths during the Depression as "salutary." All of these things reveal a side of Mencken's character which could certainly bear exploring, and are certainly more interesting than such revelations as "between drinking sessions he slumbered like an innocent." I would also like...
...Then, having heard the speech, you would have to find out what motivated it, who wrote it for the politician, who listened to it. You would have to find out who liked the speech, who said the politician was a windbag anyway, and whether the speaker went home to his family or to confer with political cronies...
...Wallace (to whom you refer as "the Messianic windbag") is speaking in the interests of world brotherhood [TIME, April 21]. What should be more natural, more desired, than that he should carry his message abroad to all parts of the world? . . . This is no time for narrow nationalism. Civilization hangs in the balance. If the future proves a growing organism, and we find ourselves making great strides toward a better expression of life on earth, coming generations can give thanks that we heeded the Christian philosophy Mr. Wallace represents. If civilization declines to an era similar to the Dark Ages...