He often portrayed, with mocking affection, the collectors themselves, pompously examining new pictures in a studio.

ECONOMIST: Honor�� Daumier

Part of the fun is the way he condenses the work of others who have approached the subject pompously or sententiously.

ECONOMIST: Walking

Non-governmental organisations, as many charities are pompously described these days, often escape the sort of scrutiny that they, themselves, like to apply to governments and companies.

ECONOMIST: An audit of conservationists

Rather than pompously declaring what conditions he will or won't accept, Mr. Anastasiades needs to come up fast with his own nonstupid ideas to put the country's finances on a sustainable path, if necessary by devising ways for depositors to share the burden.

WSJ: Cyprus Needs to Find a Quick Debt Fix

"The Blue Moon Saloon, " my brother Layton and I used to say while we floated in the creek, our noses pointed pompously upward, as if only gentry frequented the establishment, though in retrospect the opposite was more probable: these days, Divide was a town of holdout ranchers, fanatical fishermen, and the occasional Unabomber, not dandy fops with a mind for parlor games.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet'