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flout

UK/flaʊt/US/flaʊt/
verbC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,856 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: flouting, flouted, flouts

To flout is to break a rule openly and without shame. Flout the rules, flout the ban, flouting the law.

The openness is essential, since flouting a rule means being seen to. It is confused constantly with flaunt, which means to show off, and the two mean quite different things.

Definitions of flout

  1. 1verbfloutTo break a rule openly and without shame.C1

    “Drivers who flout the speed limit near schools will face heavy fines.”

flout is a breaking.

Where it comes from

Perhaps from Middle English flouten, to play the flute, by way of the sense of mocking.

  1. Middle English

    flouten — to play the flute

  2. English, today

    flout

Perhaps from Middle English flouten (“to play the flute”); compare with Dutch fluiten.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

flout in the wild

  • At the time, the west bank of the Rhine was under French occupation, and the peasantry was happy to celebrate anyone who was able to flout the law.

    Schinderhannes

  • A compound fine will be issued to heavy vehicles that flout the rule.

    Persiaran Tujuan

  • Further, any deviation from these scripts was seen as problematic, possibly defined as "immoral acts" which flout religious customs, or seen as "psychologically pathological".

    Gender polarization

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.