pomp

Pomp refers to ceremonial splendor and the outward display of magnificence surrounding a person, event, or institution. It encompasses rituals, elaborate costumes, processions, decorations, and music designed to convey authority, ritual significance, or social status. While often linked to official or religious ceremonies, pomp is also found in secular contexts such as state occasions, military parades, graduations, and lavish public events.

The word derives from Middle French pompe or Latin pompa, originally meaning a procession or a showy display in religious and civic life. In English, pomp has carried a range of connotations from neutral description of ceremonial form to critique of ostentation, depending on tone and context.

In political and cultural life, pomp signals legitimacy, tradition, and continuity of authority, but critics argue that it can obscure practical affairs or flatter power. Anthropologists study pomp as a ritual performance that reinforces social hierarchies and collective identity. In journalism and literature the term is often used critically.

A widely cited musical link is Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, a marching suite whose first movement has become a conventional processional at graduations and other ceremonies. The phrase "pomp and circumstance" has entered common language to describe ceremonial grandeur, though the use of pomp remains context dependent.