Other forms: struts, strutting, strutted
To strut is to walk proudly, showing off. Strut about, strut your stuff, a confident strut.
The walk is stiff and deliberate and always for an audience, which is why the word is faintly mocking. Strut your stuff means to display what you can do. There is a separate noun strut meaning a bar that takes a load in a structure — a strut in a frame, a suspension strut — which is unrelated in feeling and possibly in origin. Note strutting; and Shakespeare's struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
1verbstrutTo walk proudly, showing off.
“The rooster strutted around the farmyard as if he owned it.”
2nounbarA bar that takes a load in a structure.
“A metal strut holds the shelf firmly against the wall.”
strut is a proud walk, or a support bar.
Middle English strouten meant to bulge or stick out, from Old English. The proud walk is a narrowing of sticking out, which is a fair description of the posture.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ter-
Proto-Indo-European
*streudʰ- — rigid, stiff
Proto-Germanic
*strūtōną
Old English
strūtian — to project out; stand out stiffly; to exert oneself, struggle
Middle English
strouten
English, today
strut
Built from
The verb is derived from Middle English strouten, struten (“to bulge, swell; to protrude, stick out; to bluster, threaten; to object forcefully; to create a disturbance; to fight; to display one's clothes in a proud or vain manner”)strote, stroute, strouʒten, strowte, strut, strute, from Old English strūtian (“to project out; stand out stiffly; to exert oneself, struggle”), from Proto-Germanic strūtōną, strūtijaną (“to be puffed up, swell”), from Proto-Indo-European streudʰ- (“rigid, stiff”), from (s)ter- (“firm; strong; rigid, stiff”). The English word is cognate with Danish strutte (“to bulge, bristle”), Low German strutt (“stiff”), Middle High German striuzen (“to bristle; to ruffle”) (modern German strotzen (“to bristle up”), sträußen obsolete); and compare Gothic 𐌸𐍂𐌿𐍄𐍃𐍆𐌹𐌻𐌻 (“leprosy”), Old Norse þrútinn (“swollen”). The noun is derived from the verb. Noun sense 2 (“instrument for adjusting the pleats of a ruff”) appears to be due to a misreading of a 16th-century work which used the word stroout (strouted (“caused (something) to bulge, protrude, or swell; strutted”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Ways of Moving