different between boast vs bombast

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /b??st/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /bo?st/
• Rhymes: -??st

Etymology 1

From Middle English bosten, from bost (“boast, glory, noise, arrogance, presumption, pride, vanity”), probably of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, swollen, puffed up, proud, arrogant, bad”). Cognate with Scots bost, boist (“to threaten, brag, boast”), Anglo-Norman bost (“ostentation”) (from Germanic). Related to Norwegian baus (“proud, bold, daring”), dialectal German baustern (“to swell”), German böse (“evil, bad, angry”), Dutch boos (“evil, wicked, angry”), West Frisian boas (“bad, wicked, angry, shrewd, clever”). Compare also dialectal Norwegian bausta, busta (“to rush onward, make a noise”).

Noun

boast (plural boasts)

1. A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
2. Something that one brags about.

3. (squash (sport)) A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.

Translations

Verb

boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)

1. (intransitive) To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
   • 2005, Lesley Brown (translator), Plato, Sophist, 235c.

     On no account will he or any other kind be able to boast that he's escaped the pursuit of those who can follow so detailed and comprehensive a method of enquiry.

2. (transitive) To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
3. (obsolete) To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
4. (squash (sport)) To play a boast shot.
5. (ergative) To possess something special (e.g. as a feature).

Synonyms

• brag

Derived terms

• boastful
• boastfully
• boastworthy
• outboast

Translations

Etymology 2

Verb

boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)

1. (masonry) To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.
2. (sculpting) To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.

References

• “boast”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–present.

Anagrams

• basto, boats, sabot

English

Etymology

From Old French bombace (“cotton, cotton wadding”), from Late Latin bombax (“cotton”), a variant of bombyx (“silkworm”), from Ancient Greek ?????? (bómbux, “silkworm”), possibly related to Middle Persian pmbk' (“cotton”), from a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “to twist, wind”.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?b?mbæst/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?b?mbæst/
• Hyphenation: bom?bast

Noun

bombast (countable and uncountable, plural bombasts)

1. (archaic) Cotton, or cotton wool.

   Synonym: fustian
2. (archaic) Cotton, or any soft, fibrous material, used as stuffing for garments; stuffing, padding.
3. (figuratively) High-sounding words; language above the dignity of the occasion; a pompous or ostentatious manner of writing or speaking.

   Synonyms: aureation, (obsolete) bombard phrase, fustian, grandiloquence, purple prose

Derived terms

• bombastic
• bombastical
• bombastically
• bombastry

Translations

Verb

bombast (third-person singular simple present bombasts, present participle bombasting, simple past and past participle bombasted)

1. To swell or fill out; to inflate, to pad.
2. To use high-sounding words; to speak or write in a pompous or ostentatious manner.

Translations

Adjective

bombast (comparative more bombast, superlative most bombast)

1. Big without meaning, or high-sounding; bombastic, inflated; magniloquent.

   Synonyms: aureate, highfalutin

References

Further reading

• fustian on Wikipedia.Wikipedia