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{{trope}}
[[File:Use big words.jpg|thumb|400px]]
{{quote|'''Douglas Klump:''' The perimeters of our assignment were described to us with specificity, Mr. Shlubb. We are to deposit our cargo into the body of water which we now overlook. It was likeways made clear to us that any embellishments of said perimeters would not be advisory.
'''Burt Shlubb:''' I cannot prescribe to such a narrow interpretation of the perimeters which you now invoke, Mr. Klump.
|''[[Sin City]]: Fat Man and Little Boy''}}
In which a person [[Feigning Intelligence|tries too hard to sound "educated"]] by using [[Big Words]] or carefully chosen phrases but gets it wrong, filling their dialogue with [[Malaproper|malapropisms]], mispronunciations and mangled grammar. The result is that they sound ''less'' educated and at the same time pompous and pretentious. This idiosyncrasy is often given to a [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All]], [[Those Two Bad Guys]], or a stuffed shirt that demands respect, but is mocked behind his back. It can also be used to add charm or humor to a character who would otherwise seem [[Flat Character|a little flat]].
This trope works best in print; characters with '''Delusions of Eloquence''' are funniest when you can read, in black and white, what they are doing to our mother tongue. In audiovisual media, unless the captions are turned on, they just come across as two [[Mooks]] who talk too much. ("Low-rent thugs with [[Trope Namer|delusions of eloquence]]," as Hartigan puts it).
Compare [[Buffy-Speak]], where the ideas may be legitimately sophisticated, but the speaker lacks the ability to properly articulate them, and [[Malaproper]], where the character may misuse words completely by accident. Contrast [[Spock Speak]] and [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]], where the big words and proper grammar are used correctly, but for differing reasons, and [[Little-Known Facts]], where the same motivation is expressed through making up "facts" instead of trying to use fancy words. See also [[You Keep Using That Word]], for the most often misused words. When used in written media, this can overlap with [[Rouge Angles of Satin]].
Alas, [[Truth in Television|there really are people who do this]]; see the Real Life section below.
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]
* ''[[Ranma ½]]'': [[Lord Error-Prone|Tatewaki Kuno]]. "The vengeance of heaven is slow but sure...". One of his least head-aching speeches.
** Kuno is getting his "eloquence" second-
== [[Comic Books]] ==
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{{quote|Imperial Pimpotron Alpha: For I, Imperial Pimpotron Alpha am scouticruiting you for priviligious erotiservitude in the Cosmolactic Emperor's Harem!}}
* ''[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3944301/1/Kakumei-Muyo Kakumei Muyo]'' by "Harunomiya" is an ambitious [[Crossover]] between ''[[Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki]]'' and ''[[Revolutionary Girl Utena]]'' that is riddled with word choice errors (such as "exclude" for "exude") that may be the result of careless use of a spellchecker, but regardless of origin definitely impose this trope on the work as a whole.
== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[Who Framed Roger Rabbit?]]'', the head weasel talks like this. Saying things like "Do you want us to disresemble the place?" and offering to "repose" of Roger.
* ''[[Super Mario Bros.]]: [[Video Game Movies Suck|The Movie]]'' has henchmen Iggy and Spike use this after they've been [[Evolutionary Levels|evolved]] into an "advanced" form.
* Leo Gorcey's Slip Mahoney character, in the ''[[The Bowery Boys|Bowery Boys]]'' movies, was all about this trope.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'': "Are ''you'' addressing ''I''?" (Pike could have said "Am ''I'' being addressed by ''you''?" - which, while correct, is even more pretentious.)
* Exaggerated in ''[[Idiocracy]]'', where the police would constantly call someone a "particular individual" which really did make them sound smart to most people.
* Chance the Gardener in ''[[Being There]]'' is a man with mild mental delays who can't take care of himself, but he's dressed so well everyone assumes he's rich, and thinks everything he says is a profound statement. Subverted in that Chance himself was just responding in the only way he knew how and had no
* In the [[The Film of the Book|film adaptation]] of ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'', Stefano claims that he wants to "facilitate and remain observatory" while working for Uncle Monty.
* in ''[[Good Will Hunting]]'', the scene where Chuckie poses as Will in the job interview.
== [[Literature]] ==
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{{quote|'''You''': Good morning, Mr. Johnson, you hemorrhoidal infrastructure.
'''Your Boss''': What? }}
* In ''[[Bridget Jones
* [[Informed Flaw|Informed example]]: the narrator of [[Anton Chekhov]]'s short story "Peasants" characterizes the "hetman" of the village, saying that he is unable to read but had acquired "bookish expressions." The reader never hears much of his speech but is left to imagine that it would be much like this.
* In ''Whale Talk'' by Cris Crutcher [[Unfortunate Names|Dan Hole]] comes across as this.
* In ''[[Les Misérables (novel)|Les Misérables]]'', the villainous Thenardier is a frequent example of this. He speaks and writes in a flowery manner that gives him the air of a philosopher/intellectual, but his writing is filled with misspellings, and Hugo comments to the effect that his obsession with [[Big Words]] shows a stupid person's understanding of what a smart person sounds like. Thenardier also frequently defends arguments by fraudulent citations of famous people, but has no actual knowledge of those authorities, except that they are famous (e.g. he will cite to the novels of someone who only wrote poetry). His wife also demonstrates this through the odd names she gave to her daughters, taken from romantic novels. This choice is very similar to the idea underlying a [[Ghetto Name]].
* Shlubb and Klump French: Perceval and Karadoc from ''[[Kaamelott]]''.▼
▲== [[Live Action TV]] ==
▲* Shlubb and Klump French: Perceval and Karadoc from ''[[Kaamelott]]''
* The classic version of this trope is ''[[Amos And Andy]]'' in both radio and television shows of the 1940s and 1950s. The radio show had its black leads voiced by white actors (who also played the roles in blackface in a movie; the television show cast actual African-Americans) speaking fluent Shlubb and Klump. It fell out of favor when polite society discovered that many whites who watched the show thought that the "Negros" they met in real life were just as stupid and shiftless as these caricatures. Weirdly, even though ''Amos & Andy'' has been off the air for half a century, even as reruns, similar blackface characters keep turning up in home-grown musicals performed by all-white college fraternities.
* Arthur Daley, the [[Honest John's Dealership|Honest John]] of ''[[Minder]]'', often uses larger words than he understands and is prone to malapropisms, as tries to present himself as genteel and upper crust.
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{{quote|"First of all, we must internalize the flatulation of the matter, by transmitting the effervescent of the indonesian proximity, in order to further segregate the crux, of my venereal infection. Now, if I may retain my liquids here for one moment, I'd like to continue the redundance of my, quote-unquote, "intestinal tract", see, because to preclude on the issue of world domination would only circumvent... excuse me, circum''size'' the revelation that reflects the aphrodesiatic symptoms, which now perpetrates the gericurl's activation."
"Allow me to expose my colon, once again, the ramification inflicted on the incision placed within the Fallopian cavities serves to be holistic, taken form the Latin word, 'jalapeno'..." }}
* An episode of ''[[M*A*S*H (television)|
* [[Those Two Bad Guys|Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar]] in ''[[Neverwhere]],''. This makes them no less horrifying, as Mr. Croup lampshades.
{{quote|'''Mr. Croup:''' " You find us funny, Messier Marquis, do you not? A source of amusement. Is that not so? With our pretty clothes, and our convoluted circumlocutions-"
'''Mr. Vandemar''' (murmuring): "I haven't got a circumlo...."
'''Mr. Croup:''' "-and our little silliness of manner and behaviour. And perhaps we ''are'' funny. [...] But you must never imagine, that just because something is funny, Messier Marquis, it is not dangerous."
'''<nowiki>[
'''Mr. Croup:''' "[[Sophisticated As Hell|Circumlocution,]] It's a way of speaking around something. A digression. Verbosity."
'''Mr. Vandemar:''' "I wondered." }}
** Croup's speech is actually correct, making it [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]], but their exchanges tend to be
* This was the schtick of Maple LaMarsh on ''[[Remember WENN]]''.
* ''[[Firefly]]'': The scene from the bar in the "Train Job" episode? ("This is a most... Ass-picious day!")
* In the ''[[Castle]]'' episode "Overkill" the hungover motel clerk tends to babble on in a fashion like this ("I appreciate you guys intervejecting [sic] with the police down there on my behest.")
* The ''[[Detroit 1-8-7]]'' episode "Beaten/ Cover Letter" featured a boxer's manager who spoke like
* One of the running gags on ''[[It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'' is Charlie's tendancy to slip into this mode whenever he tries to impress people. One of the most memorable happens when he receives advice on how to talk to a beautiful woman.
{{quote|'''Mac:''' Just tell her you're a philanthropist. Chicks dig it when you work with kids and senior citizens and crap.
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{{quote|"The earth began as a soup, with little orgasms floating about in it."}}
* The police version mentioned under Real Life is displayed by Dave, a police officer in ''[[Parks and Recreation]]'', especially in [[Flanderization|his second appearance]] on the show. His "talking head" segments are delivered like police reports, and in general, he has a tendency toward malapropisms and using [[Perfectly Cromulent Word]](s).
* Venezuelan comedian Emilio Lovera's character "Gustavo 'El Chunior'" (sic), who began as a sketch in the now defunct show ''Radio Rochela'' and later expanded in Lovera's own TV shows, Stand Up routines, and now a podcast. El Chunior is a radio jockey prone to use words that are too big for his intellectual ability of understanding or pronouncing them correctly despite his received and pompous diction. What separates him from being a mere malaproper, however, is him being an [[Know-Nothing Know-It-All|individual of rather limited knowledge]] completely convinced of [[Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance|himself being a ray of cultural illustration]] illuminating his prospective audience.
== [[Radio]] ==
* This was a particular specialty of Archie the Bartender, in the old '40s comedy ''[[
* Phil Harris did this all the time on ''[[The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show]]''.
* The [[Bob and Ray]] character of Dr. Elmer Stapley, "The Word Wizard", was all about this trope.
== [[Theatre]] ==
▲== [[Theater]] ==
* The theme of mooks talking over their heads was a mainstay of [[Damon Runyon]]'s writings in the early 20th century and is the likely inspiration for most modern examples. ''[[Guys and Dolls]]'', a musical and movie in the 1950s, is still being performed today, giving generations of American high school students a chance to channel their inner mook on stage.
* Another '50s example is the musical and movie ''[[Kiss Me Kate]]'', the plot of which concerns a production of a [[The Musical|musical]] version of [[William Shakespeare]]'s ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]''. Two mooks show up at the theater to make sure the leading man pays his gambling debts. They get to strut their stuff in the classic comic song, "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."
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* In the [[Commedia Dell'Arte]], one of Dottore's standards was to misuse words, for example pluralizing things according to Latin or Greek rules; he was terrified of being mugged by "hoodla" (hoodlums).
* In ''[[Seminar]]'', Douglas often comes off this way, especially in his [[Establishing Character Moment|opening speech]].
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* After you beat up some common thugs in one part of ''[[Devil Survivor 2]]'', [[Magnificent Bastard|Commander Hotsuin]] shows up and asks if it's fun playing with imbeciles. The beaten thug replies, "You're an umbilical!"
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' came close to this in its early days. The author himself admitted, that he actually spoke like this in those days. The scripting has undergone major improvements since then.
* Marcus from ''[[1/0]]''
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uu: THE MYSTERY IS SOLVED. WHO GIVES A FuCK.
TT: [[Lampshaded Trope|It sounds like you don't even know what a red herring is.]] }}
== [[Web Original]] ==
* Torq, the 3/4ths Orc from the
* The [[Binder of Shame]] features Biff Bam, a guy with "a habit of randomly mispronouncing things in ways that made little or no sense at all". The resulting [[Funetik Aksent]] has the mispronunciations capitalised so they're not mistaken for typos.
{{quote|"I looked over your character sheets and everything is okay except for one thing. I asked everyone to make ACAMADEMIANS and one of you made a NIMJA."}}
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* [[Family Guy|Peter Griffin]] finds the use of this trope "both shallow and pedantic".
** This holds for any word used that Peter doesn't understand, such as "esoteric".
{{quote|'''Peter''': * after being told his theme choice was esoteric* Lois, ''[[
'''Brian''': Swing and a miss. }}
** Or...
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* Stinks from ''[[Erky Perky]]'' tends to talk like this. Of course, no other character is actually smart enough to call him on it.
* The "Ungroundable" episode of ''[[South Park]]'' had all the "cool" kids at school jumping on the ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' bandwagon and pretending to be vampires. One of the "vampires" is a snobby preppy in a [[Classical Movie Vampire]] cape who [[You Keep Using That Word|repeatedly misuses]] the phrase "''per se''", just to sound important.
== [[Real Life]] ==
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** Along that note, Americans who try to "speak British" often tend up end up sounding this way.
* People who refuse to split infinitives often end up writing ridiculously worded sentences in an effort to sound formal.
** The origin of the rule, "Never split infinitives," is this trope incarnate. The new social mobility of Britain in the 1700-1900 period meant there were folks who were "new money." They wanted to sound like "old money," and so a market emerged immediately for language manuals. To compete, your language manual had to be the most precise, with more rules and pointless mannerisms than anyone else's. Much of the English Kludge traces back to this time. So why don't we split infinitives? ''Because you can't in Latin, where the infinitive is a single word.'' Modern languages like Spanish still have one-word infinitives like "hablar," to speak. English does not need this rule. Those rules you were hit with in grade school are mostly the
*** At one point, the rule ''was'' accurate (ie, it just wasn't done). Probably a good thing too, since back when it was first done (circa [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer's]] time), people got downright [[Egregious]] with what they'd stuff in there (Geoffrey included).
{{quote|"There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to split an infinitive, any more than we should forsake instant coffee and air travel because they weren’t available to the Romans."|Bill Bryson}}
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* One of the many language fumbles made by the writers of [[419 Scam|Nigerian scam e-mails]], particularly when they try to sound official. Actual example:
{{quote|The choice of contacting you aroused from the geographical nature of where you live particularly due to the sensitivity of the transaction and the confidentiality herein. Now our company has been waiting for any of the relatives to come-up for the claim of the inheritance fund but unfortunately all efforts has being void. I personally have been unsuccessful in locating neither the relatives nor any next of kin to Mr. Saba. On this regards, I seek your consent to present you as the next of kin / will beneficiary to the deceased so that the proceeds of this account valued at Eighty Five Million Dollars($85M) can be paid to you.}}
* Writers—most often [[Fanfic]] writers, but by no means limited to them—who rely overly much on spellcheckers (and their often wildly-incorrect suggestions for "correct" spellings) can ''accidentally'' inflict this on their work, sometimes to the point where it becomes a [[Word Salad]]. For instance, the [[Crossover]] fic ''[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4183715/1/Awaken-Sleeper Awaken Sleeper]'' by "Water Mage" is littered with constructions like
{{quote|We both can do it, so it's obliviously genetic.}}
:and
{{quote|Even Mab and Titania were compelled by treaties formed from the broken bodies of gods of Before and neo faith burned throughout time marjoram.}}
:which are so unlikely to be authorial error that they had to have been spellchecked into existence.
* Many of the entries on [[The Big List of Booboos and Blunders]] are as likely to have been a result of this trope as being spellchecker miscorrections.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
[[Category:
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