Word.ws English Dictionary

fanfaronade

/ˌfænfɛɹəˈneɪd/

fanfaronade noun: empty, self-assertive boasting; an instance of such behaviour.

Noun

fanfaronade (countable and uncountable, plural fanfaronades)

  1. Empty, self-assertive boasting; an instance of such behaviour.
    • […] the Gasconads of France, Rodomontads of Spain, Fanfaronads of Italy, and Bragadochio brags of all other countries, could no more astonish his invincible heart, then would the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps.1652, Thomas Urquhart, “Εκσκυβαλαυρον (The Jewel)”, in The Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, Knight, Edinburgh: Thomas Maitland Dundrennan, published 1834, →ISBN, page 217
    • [he] was an enemy to every thing that approached to fanfaronade, and knew enough of the world to lay it down as a sort of general rule, that he who talks a great deal of fighting is seldom a brave soldier1828, Walter Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter in Chronicles of the Canongate, Boston: Samuel H. Parker, p. 78
  2. Loud, showy display, celebration or proclamation (of something), sometimes involving the playing of trumpets or other musical instruments.
    • With a fanfaronade of welcome they lowered their drawbridges1850, John Miley, The History of the Papal States, London: T.C. Newby, Volume 2, Book 2, Chapter 4, p. 302
    • he dined in public—a fanfaronade of trumpets proclaiming his down-sitting and his up-rising1877, Frances Hodgson Burnett, That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, London: F. Warne, p. 55

Verb

fanfaronade (third-person singular simple present fanfaronades, present participle fanfaronading, simple past and past participle fanfaronaded)

  1. (intransitive) To engage in empty, self-assertive boasting.
    • Given the agreement he was working under, his testimony was hardly more than fanfaronading about the power that the agreement afforded him over the financial affairs of Clark.1990, E. Grady Jolly, United States Circuit Judge, opinion regarding the matter of Clark Pipe & Supply Co., cited in Robert L. Jordan and William D. Warren, Bankruptcy, Westbury, NY: The Foundation...
    • Call him an archetypal Texas bounder … with lots of mendacious savvy. Just before you blew him off as a fanfaronading blockhead, Bubba could flick a switch and start conversing about Federal Reserve interest rates, voter registration fraud in the deep South, and Kurt Vonnegut’s great novel...2016, John Treadwell Nichols, chapter 1, in The Annual Big Arsenic Fishing Contest!, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, page 4
  2. (ambitransitive) To proclaim loudly; to promote enthusiastically.
    • Nowadays a returning traveller with half his merits is […] fanfaronaded every step of his homeward journey. The telegraph tells how he has arrived here, the special correspondent what he has to say there, until by the time he lands at Liverpool or Plymouth […] the interviewer and the illustrated...1892, Robert Brown, The Story of Africa and Its Explorers, London: Cassell, Volume 1, Chapter 11, p. 208
    • […] I criticised her straight Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the captivating frizziness of Joanna’s hair.1906, William John Locke, chapter 3, in The Beloved Vagabond, New York: John Lane, page 37
    Synonyms:
    trumpet
  3. (intransitive) To make a noisy, showy display or celebration; to play a fanfare.
    • Even when the inhabitants of the village took to rising at four o'clock in the morning, and fanfaronaded with ill-blown bugles, and flaring torches, and a dreadful untiring drum about the street, I forbore to grumble,1889, David Christie Murray, chapter 2, in Schwartz, London: Macmillan, page 19

Examples of fanfaronade in a sentence

  • I didn't want to rain on his fanfaronade […]”1997, Mordecai Richler, chapter 8, in Barney’s Version, New York: Knopf, page 78:
  • […] we sailed gracefully out of the hotel yard, Rattray too- tooing a fanfaronade on the horn.1904, C. N. Williamson, A. M. Williamson, The Lightning Conductor, Toronto: McLeod & Allen, page 18:
  • Burnside indicated her disapproval of all this with a fanfaronade of flatulence.1955, Patrick Dennis, chapter 4, in Auntie Mame, New York: Vanguard Press, page 69:
  • Here, at apparently reasonable prices, is a fanfaronade of cakes decorated electric pink, yellow, or blue.2010, Ed Vulliamy, chapter 9, in Amexica, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 297:

Synonyms of fanfaronade

All synonyms of fanfaronade

Forms of fanfaronade

Noun
pluralfanfaronades
Verb
third-person singular presentfanfaronades
present participlefanfaronading
past participlefanfaronaded
pastfanfaronaded

Origin of fanfaronade

From French fanfaronnade (“bragging, boasting”); other senses influenced by fanfare.

Questions about fanfaronade

What does fanfaronade mean?
Fanfaronade means empty, self-assertive boasting; an instance of such behaviour.
How do you use fanfaronade in a sentence?
I didn't want to rain on his fanfaronade […]”
What part of speech is fanfaronade?
Fanfaronade can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce fanfaronade?
Fanfaronade is pronounced /ˌfænfɛɹəˈneɪd/.
What is the plural of fanfaronade?
The plural of fanfaronade is fanfaronades.

Words near fanfaronade in the dictionary

  1. fanfares
  2. fanfaring
  3. fanfarings
  4. fanfaron
  5. fanfarona
  6. fanfaronade
  7. fanfaronaded
  8. fanfaronades
  9. fanfaronading
  10. fanfaronas
  11. fanfaronnade

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fanfaronade (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.

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Cite this entry: “fanfaronade.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fanfaronade. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.