flaunt
/flɔːnt
/- We are eager to flaunt every new gadget we buy but are yet to learn the basic rules to be followed while using it.
- It is not just about owning the painting and flaunting it but more about displaying it with style and the right interiors.
- Smart lads, they hadn't flaunted the loot, bragged about the heist, or written a rap song memorializing the event.
Synonyms
- British youths themselves force as much booze as possible down their throats, while flaunting themselves shamelessly in a bid to grab the most attention from the opposite sex.
- And if they are flaunting themselves, it also speaks of their new-found confidence.
Usage
Flaunt and flout may sound similar but they have different meanings. Flaunt means ‘display ostentatiously’, as in visitors who liked to flaunt their wealth, while flout means ‘openly disregard a rule or convention’, as in new recruits growing their hair and flouting convention. It is a common error, recorded since around the 1940s, to use flaunt when flout is intended, as in the young woman had been flaunting the rules and regulations. In the Oxford English Corpus the second and third commonest objects of flaunt, after wealth, are law and rules.
Derivatives
flaunter
flaunty
- The neck line was cut in a jagged, low V that would show the faintest shadows of my cleavage to anyone took the time to look, but it wasn't flaunty.
- For once she wasn't wearing any tight pants or flaunty shirts.
Origin
Mid 16th century: of unknown origin.
flout from mid 16th century:
Flout, which appeared in the 16th century and means ‘to openly disregard a rule or convention’, may come from a Dutch word fluiten meaning ‘whistle, play the flute, hiss derisively’. There is a German dialect expression pfeifen auf, literally ‘pipe at’, which is used in a similar way. Flout is often confused with flaunt (mid 16th century), ‘to display something ostentatiously’, but there is no connection—the origin of flaunt is unknown.