boast
UK/bəʊst//boʊst/
boast noun: a brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
Noun
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.
- A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.
Verb (1)
boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)
- To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
- 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.2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown, Sophist, page 235c
- [with about or of] To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
- Lest bad men should boast / Their specious deeds.1667, John Milton, “Book II”, 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...
- 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...2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27
- To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
- In God we boast all the day long.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Psalms 44:8
- To play a boast shot.
- To possess (a special and desirable quality).
- The hotel boasts one of the best views of the sea.
- His family boasted a famous name.
Verb (2)
boast (third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted)
- To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.
- To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.
boast meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
boast in Hindi
- 1. intransitive: to brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself
- डींग मारना ḍīṅg mārnā
boast in Tamil
- தற்புகழ்ச்சி, பீற்றிக் கொள்தல், வீம்புரை, தருக்குரை, வீனான தற்புகழ்ச்சி, தற்பெருமையின் காரணம்
boast in Urdu
- بڑ ہنکائی, ڈینگ, لاف, نمود, شیخی, فخر کرنا
boast in Bengali
- অহংকার করা, আত্মগর্ব করা
More languagesFewer languages
- boast in Telugu
- గప్పాలు gappālu
- boast in Malayalam
- പൊങ്ങച്ചം poṅṅaccaṁ, വീമ്പ് vīmpŭ, വീമ്പടിക്കുക vīmpaṭikkuka
- boast in Kannada
- ಬಡಾಯಿ, ಆತ್ಮಸ್ತುತಿ, ಜಂಬ, ಹೆಮ್ಮೆ
- boast in Punjabi
- ਸ਼ੇਖੀ ਮਾਰਨ ਲਈ
- boast in Sanskrit
- श्लाघते ślā́ghate
- boast in Nepali
- घमण्ड गर्नुहोस्, घमण्ड गर्ने, घमण्ड गर्न
- boast in Arabic
- تَبَاهَى tabāhā
- boast in Persian
- خودستایی xodsetâyi, لاف lâf, بوش bowš
- boast in Thai
- โม้ móo, คุยโว, โอ้อวด
- boast in Vietnamese
- khoe, khoe khoang, khoác lác, nói khoác
- boast in Myanmar
- ဝါ wa, ကြွား krwa:, ဝင့် wang., အကြွား a.krwa:
Examples of boast in a sentence
- 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.2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27:
- The Meinung, Kaoshu, Shalin, and Liukuei Hakka together comprised the army's "Right Unit," and it alone boasted some 3,200 fighting men.1983, Burton Pasternak, “Lungtu Before the Japanese”, in Guests in the Dragon : Social Demography of a Chinese district, 1895-1946...
- Rising five stories and stretching several football fields long, the structure boasts 100,000 square feet of new office space.2018 June 22, Paul Mozur, “Inside a Heist of American Chip Designs, as China Bids for Tech Power”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, →OCLC...
- 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.2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 67:
Synonyms of boast
Antonyms
Forms of boast
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | boasts |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | boasts |
| present participle | boasting |
| past participle | boasted |
| past | boasted |
Origin of boast
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”). Possible doublet of boost. Compare typologically puffy, Russian напы́щенный (napýščennyj), наду́тый (nadútyj).
Words formed from boast
Words that rhyme with boast
12 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about boast
- What does boast mean?
- Boast means a brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
- What is boast in Hindi?
- Boast in Hindi is डींग मारना (ḍīṅg mārnā). See Boast meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use boast in a sentence?
- 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.
- What part of speech is boast?
- Boast can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce boast?
- Boast is pronounced /bəʊst/ (UK).
- What is the plural of boast?
- The plural of boast is boasts.
Words near boast in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: boast (page history and authors); boast (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); boast (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); boast (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); boast (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); boast (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); श्लाघते (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); boast (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-boast.ogg.
Cite this entry: “boast.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/boast. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.