tympany

English

Etymology

Coined based on Ancient Greek τύμπανον (túmpanon).

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ˈtɪmpəni/
  • Hyphenation: tym‧pa‧ny
  • Homophones: timpani, tympani

Noun

tympany (countable and uncountable, plural tympanies)

  1. The sound made by beating a drum.
  2. (medicine) Tympanites (distention of the abdomen).
  3. Inflation; conceit; bombast; turgidness.
    • 1682, John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe:
      Thine's a tympany of sense.
    • 1828, Thomas De Quincey, “Elements of Rhetoric”, in Blackwood's Magazine:
      Dr. Johnson, for his triads and his antithetic balances, he taxes more than once with a plethoric and tautologic tympany of sentence
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