(I'm tempted to extend this metaphor even further, because the story of the Medusa is interesting, but I'm trying to combat this particular type of urge, as it tends to inflate word counts beyond what a normal reader can be reasonably expected to tolerate. As do these self-referential asides).
The problem isn't praise, but inflated praise, words like "perfect" or "incredibly good", as opposed to a simple "good".
He had just finished arranging to have eight copies of the revised and rhetorically inflated 330,000-word text of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom run off by the press of the Oxford Times and was emotionally drained by the drafting of his memoir.
It's the method of deployment -- malignant ridicule -- that inflates these words with their poison-gas power.
Then there's the eerie, blobby, pinkish, larger-than-human creature that is inflated as the words of the Florentine artist Giorgio Vasari are read.
Without party support – and no, Ben Carson doesn't count – there can be no legislative action to back up the over-inflated words that emerge from President Trump's mouth.
Six decades later, R. Christopher Whalen takes up the gauntlet implied in those words in "Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream" (John Wiley & Sons, $34.95).
Or taken the word "bullying" and inflated it for all its worth to pander to your sense of victimhood?
Praise was considered inflated when it involved an additional word such as an adverb ("incredibly") or adjective (perfect").
The novelty of a one-word messaging app has inflated a startup valuation of $10 million at Yo's last totting up.
If a sermon seems vague or preposterous, it is simply punctuated with quotes from the Gospels, inflated by the heft of His word.
