A character using familiar words but pronouncing them fancily is giving them Pretentious Pronunciation. This delusion is often associated with a Know-Nothing Know-It-All or Fake Brits.

('Low-rent thugs with delusions of eloquence,' as Hartigan puts it). In a film, they just come across as two mooks who talk too much. Characters with Delusions of Eloquence are really funny in the comics, where you can look at the talk bubbles and see, in black and white, what they are doing to our mother tongue. Unfortunately, it is sometimes a case of Truth in Television, as there really are people who do this.

In fiction, this habit can be used to set up a character as a stuffed shirt who demands respect but is mocked behind his back or to add charm or humor to a character who would otherwise seem a little flat. The result is that they sound less educated and at the same time a pompous and pretentious attention seeker. Delusions of Eloquence occur when a person tries too hard to sound 'educated' by using Big Words or carefully chosen phrases, but gets it wrong, filling their dialogue with malapropisms, mispronunciations, and mangled grammar.

Eloquent words are not true