different between boast vs vaunt

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

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /v??nt/
• Rhymes: -??nt
• (some accents) IPA^(key): /v??nt/
• Rhymes: -??nt
• (US) IPA^(key): /v?nt/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /v?nt/

Etymology 1

From Middle English vaunten, from Anglo-Norman vaunter, variant of Old French vanter, from Latin v?nus (“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, Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, chapter XC

     "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

• (speak boastfully): boast, brag

Derived terms

• vaunter

Translations

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

1. A boast; an instance of vaunting.
   • 1904, G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book II, chapter III

     He has answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric.

Translations

Etymology 2

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

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

1. (obsolete) The first part.

Anagrams

• Tuvan