Definition of "boast"

boast¹

/bəʊst/

noun
plural boasts
1. A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
2. Something that one brags about.
3. (squash) A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.
verb
third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted
1. (intransitive) To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
  Quotations
  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
2. (transitive) (used with "about" or "of") To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
  Quotations
  Lest bad men should boast / Their specious deeds.
  1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,
  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 successful online business is to be better than your rivals at undermining people's control of their own attention.
  2013 June 21, Oliver Burkeman, “The tao of tech”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 2, page 27
3. (obsolete) To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
  Quotations
  In God we boast all the day long.
  1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], Psalms 44:8
4. (squash) To play a boast shot.
5. (ergative) To possess something special (e.g. as a feature).
  Quotations
  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

boast²

/bəʊst/

verb
third-person singular simple present boasts, present participle boasting, simple past and past participle boasted
1. (masonry) To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.
2. (sculpting) To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.

Definition of "boast"

boast1

noun

verb

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

Quotations

boast2

verb

boast¹

boast²