bravado
/bɹɑˈvɑdoʊ/
bravado noun: a swaggering show of defiance or courage.
Noun
bravado (countable and uncountable, plural bravados or bravadoes)
- A swaggering show of defiance or courage.
- The angry customer stood in the middle of the showroom and voiced his complaints with loud bravado.
- For a bravado he had the organ taken down and conveyed to his father's house, where he had it put up in the chamber where it now stands. It was also for a bravado that he played on it every day. But, by−and−by, the amount of time which he spent at it daily began to increase rapidly.1891, Rosa Mulholland, The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly, page 12
- A superficial show of courage.
- A swaggerer; a braggart.
Verb
bravado (third-person singular simple present bravados, present participle bravadoing, simple past and past participle bravadoed)
bravado meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada
bravado in Urdu
- گیدڑ بھپکی, لاف
bravado in Bengali
- মিথ্যা সাহস প্রদর্শন
bravado in Malayalam
- swaggering, boldness, bluster
- ചങ്കൂറ്റം, കരളൂറ്റം, കരളുറപ്പ്, വീരവാദം മുഴക്കൽ, എല്ലാം പുല്ലാണെന്ന മട്ട്, ധൈര്യം ഭാവിക്കൽ
bravado in Kannada
- ಪುಸಿಕೆಚ್ಚು, ಪುಸಿಬೆದರಿಕೆ, ಶೌರ್ಯಾಟೋಪ, ಡಂಭ, ಧೈರ್ಯ ಪ್ರದರ್ಶನ
More languagesFewer languages
- bravado in Tagalog
- bangad
Examples of bravado in a sentence
- Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan’s threats.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 47:
- Stripped of all bravado, Cersei breaks, and shows the very scared, vulnerable woman who has kept her emotions at bay.2019 May 12, Alex McLevy, “Westeros faces a disastrous final battle on the penultimate Game of Thrones (newbies)”, in The A.V. Club...
- The rise of SOS devices – satellite-synched gadgets that send a signal to rescue agencies when activated – give people bravado, Estrada says.2023 February 11, Katharine Gammon, “A mountain of trouble? The draw – and danger – of California’s Mount Baldy”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
- No doubt there is fear despite the bravado, but there is also no significant loss of Ukrainian military cohesion.2023 April 2, Dan Sabbagh, Ed Ram, “Surrounded and outgunned, Ukraine’s tank crews prepare for battle of Bakhmut”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
Forms of bravado
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bravados |
| plural | bravadoes |
| alternative form (obsolete) | bravade |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bravados |
| present participle | bravadoing |
| past participle | bravadoed |
| past | bravadoed |
Origin of bravado
From French bravade (“bragging or boasting”), from Italian bravata, from verb bravare (“brag, boast”), from bravo. Compare bravura.
Words that rhyme with bravado
Questions about bravado
- What does bravado mean?
- Bravado means a swaggering show of defiance or courage.
- What is bravado in Urdu?
- Bravado in Urdu is گیدڑ بھپکی, لاف. See Bravado meaning in Urdu.
- How do you use bravado in a sentence?
- Rokoff assumed a truculent air, attempting by bravado to show how little he feared Tarzan’s threats.
- What part of speech is bravado?
- Bravado can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce bravado?
- Bravado is pronounced /bɹɑˈvɑdoʊ/.
- What is the plural of bravado?
- The plural of bravado is bravados.
Words near bravado in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bravado (page history and authors); bravado (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Bravado (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bravado (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bravado (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bravado.wav.
Cite this entry: “bravado.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bravado. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.