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''vaunt'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''vaunt'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260313192153-00-⌔

vaunt - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

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

  • (intransitive) To speak boastfully.
    • ✤ Synonyms: boast, brag
    • ✤ “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.”**1
  • (transitive) To speak boastfully about.
  • (transitive) To boast of; to make a vain display of; to display with ostentation.
    • ✤ Near-synonym: flaunt
    • ✤ Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.2
    • ✤ My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.3

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

  • An instance of vaunting; a boast.
    • ✤ *the spirits beneath, whom I seduced/with other promises and other vaunts *4
    • ✤ “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! […]”5
    • ✤ 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.6

Noun

vaunt (plural vaunts)

  • (obsolete) The first part.
    • ✤ the vaunt and firstlings of those broils7

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) enPR: vônt, IPA: /vɔːnt/
  • (Standard Southern British, Australian, New Zealand) IPA: /voːnt/
    • Audio (Australian): 🔊
  • (US)
    • (without the cot–caught merger) enPR: vônt, IPA: /vɔnt/
    • (cot–caught merger) enPR: vänt, IPA: /vɑnt/
      • Audio (US, cot–caught merger): 🔊
  • (South Asia) IPA: /ʋɔɳʈ/, (father-bother merger)/ʋɑɳʈ/
    • Homophone: want
  • Rhymes: -ɔːnt

Etymology 1

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

Etymology 2

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

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1829, Washington Irving, chapter XC, in Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada: ↩

  2. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Cor Cor-Chapter-xiii/#4 xiii:4: ↩

  3. 1667, John Milton, “Book III”, 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: ↩

  4. 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: ↩

  5. 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, →OCLC: ↩

  6. 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: ↩

  7. c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act PROLOGUE,]: ↩

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