boast
English edit
Pronunciation edit
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /bəʊst/
- (General American) IPA(key): /boʊst/
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -əʊst
Etymology 1 edit
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 edit
boast (plural boasts)
- A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
- Something that one brags about.
- It was his regular boast that he could eat two full English breakfasts in one sitting.
- (squash) A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.
Translations edit
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
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Verb edit
boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)
- (intransitive) To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
- (transitive) (used with "about" or "of") To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
- 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC:
- Lest bad men should boast / Their specious deeds.
- 2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:
- The dirty secret of the internet is that all this distraction and interruption is immensely profitable. Web companies like to boast about "creating compelling content", or offering services that let you "stay up to date with what your friends are doing", […] and so on. But the real way to build a successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.
- (obsolete) To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
- 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 44:8:
- In God we boast all the day long.
- (squash) To play a boast shot.
- (ergative) To possess something special (e.g. as a feature).
- The hotel boasts one of the best views of the sea.
- His family boasted a famous name.
- 2018 June 22, Paul Mozur, “Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on June 22, 2018, Technology[2]:
- Jinhua and others are spending big to get there. In Jinjiang, a city in Fujian Province once known as a shoe-manufacturing center, Jinhua’s new factory is almost finished. Rising five stories and stretching several football fields long, the structure boasts 100,000 square feet of new office space.
- 2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 67:
- After dropping off travellers at Foregate Street, my train terminates at Shrub Hill - a station which boasts one of the best selection [sic] of semaphore signals left in the country.
Synonyms edit
Antonyms edit
Derived terms edit
Translations edit
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Etymology 2 edit
Verb edit
boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)
- (masonry) To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.[1]
- (sculpting) To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.
Translations edit
References edit
- ^ 1849-1850, John Weale, Rudimentary Dictionary of Terms used in Architecture, Building, and Engineering
- “boast”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
Anagrams edit
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/əʊst
- Rhymes:English/əʊst/1 syllable
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from North Germanic languages
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- en:Squash
- English verbs
- English intransitive verbs
- English terms with quotations
- English transitive verbs
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English ergative verbs
- en:Masonry
- English reporting verbs
- en:Talking