Definition of "bluster"

Private-equity nabobs bristle at being dubbed mere financiers. Piling debt onto companies’ balance-sheets is only a small part of what leveraged buy-outs are about, they insist. Improving the workings of the businesses they take over is just as core to their calling, if not more so. Much of their pleading is public-relations bluster.

2013 June 22, “Engineers of a different kind”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 70

Your ministerial directors blustered like tragic tyrants.

1774 April 19, Edmund Burke, Speech of Edmund Burke, Esq. on American Taxation, April 19, 1774, 2nd edition, London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […], published 1775

He bloweth and blustereth out […] his abominable blasphemy.

1532, Thomas More, Confutation of Tyndale's Answer

As if therewith he meant to bluster all princes into a perfect obedience to his commands.The spelling has been modernized.

1655, Thomas Fuller, edited by James Nichols, The Church History of Britain, […], new edition, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: […] [James Nichols] for Thomas Tegg and Son, […], published 1837

And ever-threatening storms / Of Chaos blustering round.

1667, John Milton, “Book III”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,