Eichmann’s Rodomontade

I came across the word ‘rodomontade’ in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann and The Holocaust‘, a book that Tamara gave me as a Chanukah gift (one of several gifts).

I had never heard the word before:

rodomontade (n.) – 1600s “vain boasting like that of Rodomonte,” a character in Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso”

Arendt uses the word to describe Eichmann, who boasted of accomplishments, including about those that were not his. And, she says, it was his rodomontade in Argentina after the war that led to his capture.