Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

boastful

UK/ˈbəʊstfʊl/US/ˈbəʊstfʊl/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,605 of 15,258neutral

Boastful means forever talking about how good you are. Every conversation finds its way back to the same subject.

It is a criticism and a fairly old-fashioned one, and it suits children's stories and moral tales. The verb boast is far commoner in speech, and English also uses it neutrally about places and things, since a hotel can boast three restaurants without anybody objecting. Bragging is the informal version, and boastfulness is the noun. Modesty is the virtue this word is measured against.

Definitions of boastful

  1. 1adjectiveboastfulShowing excessive pride in your own achievements.C1

    “He was boastful about every deal he had ever done.”

Where it comes from

  1. Middle English

    bostful

  2. English, today

    boastful

From Middle English bostful, equivalent to boast + ful.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Feelings & Character, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 16 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

boastful in the wild

  • A "boastful Irish ditty" of that title is recorded as early as the 1880s.

    I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day

  • The lyrics are not as boastful as other Beatnuts songs, but are instead a hopeful demand to be considered good.

    Props Over Here

  • Figuratively, it is an expression of triumph for a successful event and indicates a boastful attitude toward one's own performance.

    Mic drop

  • The third collaboration between Migos and Drake, it is a boastful track about the rappers getting their way in all regards.

    Having Our Way

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • boast