vaunt

English

WOTD – 19 March 2008

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: vônt, IPA(key): /vɔːnt/
  • (US) enPR: vônt, IPA(key): /vɔnt/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Audio (General Australian):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɔːnt

Etymology 1

From Middle English vaunten, from Anglo-Norman vaunter, variant of Old French vanter, from Latin vānus (“vain, boastful”).

Verb

vaunt (third-person singular simple present vaunts, present participle vaunting, simple past and past participle vaunted)

  1. (intransitive) To speak boastfully.
    • 1829, Washington Irving, chapter XC, in Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada:
      "The number," said he, "is great, but what can be expected from mere citizen soldiers? They vaunt and menace in time of safety; none are so arrogant when the enemy is at a distance; but when the din of war thunders at the gates they hide themselves in terror."
  2. (transitive) To speak boastfully about.
  3. (transitive) To boast of; to make a vain display of; to display with ostentation.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

  1. An instance of vaunting; a boast.
    • 1667, John Milton, “Book IV”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
      the spirits beneath, whom I seduced / with other promises and other vaunts
    • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC:
      “In every vaunt you make,” she said, “I have my triumph. I single out in you the meanest man I know, the parasite and tool of the proud tyrant, that his wound may go the deeper, and may rankle more. Boast, and revenge me on him! […] ”
    • 1904, Gilbert K[eith] Chesterton, “Enter a Lunatic”, in The Napoleon of Notting Hill, London; New York, N.Y.: John Lane, The Bodley Head, →OCLC, book II, page 106:
      He has answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric. He has lifted the only shield I cannot break, the shield of an impenetrable pomposity.
Translations

Etymology 2

From French avant (“before, fore”). See avant, vanguard.

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

  1. (obsolete) The first part.

References

See also

Anagrams

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