pomp [ME] This comes from a combination of French pompe ‘splendid display, vanities of the world’ and Latin pompa ‘ceremonial procession, ostentation, display’, which came from Greek pompe ‘a sending away, solemn procession, parade, display’ formed from pempein ‘to send’. Pomp and Circumstance was borrowed by Sir Edward Elgar for a series of marches published from 1901 onwards from Shakespeare’s Othello, ‘Pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war’. There has always been a degree of ambiguity in English and other languages as to whether pomp was impressive display or over-the-top vainglory. There is no ambiguity about pompous [LME] as generally used in modern English, with its connotations of self-importance and pretentiousness, but it too could be used to mean ‘grandiose, magnificent’ in the past, and is still occasionally found in this use.