Song Lyric Question: "The Joker" -- "Pompitous of love?"

[Arugula Latte]

Okay. Steve Miller Band song. The Joker.

"Some people call me Maurice because I speak of the pompitous of love."

WTF?

WHAT IS A POMPITOUS? Please. Anyone. This has bugged me for a good part of my life. Sure there is famine, drought, death, destruction, pollution, war, George W. Bush, and so on, but this is a troubling question. Thanks.

[unblock]

1. well if you don't know,

i'm not going to explain it to you.

[short bus president]

2. It's a made-up term

as best I can gather.

Lots of googling to be had on the topic.

[Catshrink]

4. Here's a google....

http://members.chello.at/tokezone/announce/pompitous.htm

I always wondered about this... thought I was just hearing it wrong.

[MercutioATC]

3. Uncle Cecil's answer...

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_065.html

[Droopy]

5. Thanks for that

Nice research. I'd always wondered about that term, too. I always figured it was just some big word that people didn't use very often. I feel a little smarter now than I did a few minutes ago.

[wtmusic]

6. And again Steve Miller is exposed

for the plagiarizer he is. "Keep On Rockin' Me" was a full-scale, undeniable ripoff of Free's "Alright Now", was a big hit, and as far as I know Free never saw a dime from it.

[JackSwift]

7. Uncle Cecil

is a right wing fascist member of Opus Dei. Or at least most of the moderators over there are, Cecil being a pseduonym.

[LWolf]

8. An instructive post.

I could probably sing the song beginning to end, but I never did know what it meant!

[last_texas_dem]

9. I think...

...that lyric comes from the early sixties oldie "The Ten Commandments of Love" by Harvey and the Moonglows (same group that recorded "Sincerely" a few years earlier).

No idea what the hell it means, though!