/flaunt/

 

/flaunt/

Verb.

-) Pronunciation: flɔːnt.

-) Etymology: of unknown origin. 

-) Preterite tense, preterite participle: flaunted.

-) Present participle: flaunting.

-) It is dated from the end of 1500.

Intransitively: 1. (Of a person) to move ostentatiously (often by walking); to behave oneself gaudily to attract notice; to obtrude oneself to public notice as being defiant, proud or bold; to seek to attract attention with the show of one’s finery, attire or beauty.

-) Translation: in French: s’exhiber, se montrer avec ostentation ; in Italian: sfoggiare ; in Spanish mostrarse con ostentación.

-) Antonym of flaunt: hide.

-) Synonyms for flaunt: swagger, prance, swell, bravado, brave, strut, swank.

-) Idiotisms related to this acceptation in a quasi-transitive use: to flaunt it (away, out, forth).

You loiter about alehouses […] or flaunt about the streets in your new-gilt chariot. 

Jonathan Swift… Law is a Bottomless Pit 1712

My spouse, alas! must flaunt in silks no more.

T. Brown… French King 1715

The Miss Lambs might now be seen flaunting along the street in French bonnets. 

Washington Irving… The Sketch Book 1820

The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of blackguards, youths, and boys, was flaunting along the streets, returning from an Irish funeral, in a Progress interspersed with singing and dancing.

Charles Dickens… The Uncommercial Traveller 1860

2. (Of a plant, plume, banner, etc.) to wave or flutter as if a flaunter or as if to attract attention; to make a showy appearance. Hence: (the subject being anything voluble). 

Orange and lemon trees flaunt over the walls. 

Hester Piozzi… Observations and Reflections 1789

Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them.

Charles Dickens… Oliver Twist 1838

[…] there were only the rooks flaunting in the sky.

Virginia Wolf… Orlando 1928

The branches flung and flaunted on the trees in the Park.

Virginia Wolf… The Shooting Party 1938

Transitively: 1. (The subject: a person or another animal) to show or display ostentatiously; to make a defiant, proud or bold show of. Hence, to boast of.

-) Translation: in Italian, ostentare, sfoggiare; in Spanish, ostentar; in French, faire ostentation de, exhiber.

-) Antonyms: conceal, hide.

[…] the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills […]

Edgar Poe… Eleonora 1842

[The pirates] flaunted their sails in front of Ostia itself; they landed in their boats at the villas on the Italian coast, carrying off lords and ladies, and holding them to ransom.

James Froude… Caesar 1879

Others find a great consolation in suddenly discovering the good qualities of their husbands. They flaunt their conjugal felicity in one's face

Oscar White… The Picture of Dorian Gray 1890

Not only do human males have gigantic sexual organs, but they flaunt them, too.

Jonathan Margolis… History of Orgasm 2004

2. (This acceptation is the consequence of a confusion with the verb flout and is to be condemned as being erroneous) flout; to treat contemptuously.

-) Words derived from the verb FLAUNT: aflaunt, flaunter, flaunty, flauntily, flauntiness, flaunting.