http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DelusionsOfEloquence

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. Translation They told us to dump the body. Just stick to the plan.

Burt Shlubb: I cannot prescribe to such a narrow interpretation of the perimeters which you now invoke, Mr. Klump. Translation No. Sin City: Fat Man and Little Boy 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.I cannot prescribe to such a narrow interpretation of the perimeters which you now invoke, Mr. Klump.

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Delusions of Eloquence occur when a person tries too hard to sound "educated" by using Big Words or carefully chosen phrases, but gets it wrong, filling their dialogue with malapropisms, mispronunciations, and mangled grammar. The result is that they sound less educated and at the same time a pompous and pretentious attention seeker.

In fiction, this habit can be used to set up a character as a stuffed shirt who demands respect but is mocked behind his back or to add charm or humor to a character who would otherwise seem a little flat. Unfortunately, it is sometimes a case of Truth in Television, as there really are people who do this.

Note, this trope works better in print. Characters with Delusions of Eloquence are really funny in the comics, where you can look at the talk bubbles and see, in black and white, what they are doing to our mother tongue. In a film, they just come across as two mooks who talk too much. ("Low-rent thugs with delusions of eloquence," as Hartigan puts it).

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This delusion is often associated with a Know-Nothing Know-It-All or Fake Brits. 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. 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. And finally, contrast Sophisticated as Hell, where the user combines more down-to-earth language with Big Words.

No Real Life Examples, Please! This exists, but this site does not seek to be judgmental and insulting towards people.

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Examples:

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Anime & Manga

Ranma ½: Tatewaki Kunō. "The vengeance of heaven is slow but sure...". One of his least head-aching speeches.

In BanG Dream!, Kaoru constantly tries to sound like an eloquent, insightful, sophisticated princely type, complete with constant references to The Great Bard. It works... on her fangirls, anyway. Anyone who spends more than five minutes in her presence, however, realises very quickly that nothing she says actually makes a lick of sense. In particular, she overuses the word 'fleeting' to the point that nobody can figure out what she's trying to mean by it.

Comic Books

Fan Works

Goku in Dragon Ball Z Abridged has a tendency to use words and phrases he doesn't actually understand. This can range from funny to awkward.

Matt and Tai in Digimon Adventure Tri Abridged do this whenever they get into an argument, which their friends lampshade. The only way to stop them is to use equally complex words to tell them to knock it off.

Films — Live-Action

Literature

Live-Action TV

Music

"Throwing Off Glass" by The Tragically Hip describes a character (implicitly the narrator's daughter) who has the tendency to overuse words she likes the sound of. In a twist on this trope, the narrator seems rather charmed by this habit, as the ambiguous wording of the lyric suggests that her love of new words adds some enchantment to the world. And just like after she heard the word "iridescent" And everything was iridescent for a while

Radio

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.

Cabin Pressure: Arthur whenever he's in Steward Mode combines this and Department of Redundancy Department, often overdoing the simplest of announcements in an attempt to sound smart.

This was a particular specialty of Archie the Bartender, in the old '40s comedy Duffys Tavern.

Phil Harris did this all the time on The Phil Harris Alice Faye Show.

The Bob & Ray character of Dr. Elmer Stapley, "The Word Wizard", was all about this trope.

In the Stanley Baxter Playhouse episode "Two Desperate Men", based on "The Ransom of Red Chief" by O. Henry, this is part of the characterisation of Hughie, the kidnapper played by Baxter, for example calling Glasgow "That great sprawling metamorphosis". This gets lampshaded by the kidnap victim: Logan: And Scout gets his words wrong because he's trying to sound clever.

Hughie: That's ostentatious!

Theater

Video Games

Web Animation

Webcomics

Web Original

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. "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."

Torq, the 3/4ths Orc from the Critical Hit Podcast often tries too hard when he tries to repeat things the smarter characters say.

Western Animation