Boasting

How to spell boasting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce boasting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does boasting mean?

1. verbTalking about oneself or one's achievements with excessive pride.
2. nounThe act of speaking with excessive pride about one's own qualities or successes.

Boasting in a sentence

• verb

  He kept boasting about his new salary at the dinner table.

• noun

  All that boasting did nothing to win over the interview panel.

• verb

  She was boasting that her team had finished the project ahead of schedule.

• noun

  His endless boasting wore thin with the rest of the staff.

Where does boasting come from?

Language of origin: Other

The base word boast appears in Middle English as bost or boost, meaning a loud or threatening utterance, an arrogant brag. Its ultimate origin is genuinely uncertain, and scholars have proposed both an Anglo-Norman source and a Celtic one, though neither has been confirmed. By the 1300s the word had settled into its familiar sense of speaking with excessive pride about oneself or one's achievements. The present participle and gerund form boasting simply adds the everyday -ing ending. The spelling trap worth noting is the oa vowel pair, which sounds like a single long o yet must be written with two letters.

How the word is built

• boast (root: to brag)
• -ing (verb/noun suffix)