boastful
Americanadjective
adjective
Usage
What does boastful mean? Boastful is used to describe someone who is known for boasting—bragging, especially in a way that exaggerates or shows excessive pride about the boaster’s skills, possessions, or accomplishments.Boastful is especially used to describe a person who boasts all the time. It can also be used to describe such claims, as in He made boastful claims about all of the awards he had won.Boastful people most often boast about themselves—their skills, their possessions, or the things that they have accomplished—but a person can also be boastful about someone else. A parent might be boastful about their child’s accomplishments, for example.Example: No one has ever actually seen him perform, but that doesn’t stop him from being boastful about how good he is.
Other Word Forms
- boastfully adverb
- boastfulness noun
- overboastful adjective
- overboastfully adverb
- overboastfulness noun
- unboastful adjective
- unboastfully adverb
- unboastfulness noun
Etymology
Origin of boastful
First recorded in 1275–1325, boastful is from the Middle English word bostful. See boast 1, -ful
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It is the kind of boastful big numbers, mixed with a make-money-not-war philosophy, that has endeared him to his boss, a friend of four decades.
Only by changing directions, and looking for ways to boost Latino economic prospects and those of other minorities, can we align our boastful multicultural rhetoric with reality.
From Los Angeles Times
A bit later, when Jackie Kennedy made her way to a sofa, Nikita Khrushchev sat down beside the first lady and treated her to a barrage of jokes and boastful stories.
From Literature
But then the bravado behind those boastful campaign pledges lost steam this month.
From Los Angeles Times
But at times he sounds boastful, observing that “people trust me, I have never failed”, and insisting his work was “not a serious crime in Vietnam”.
From BBC
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
