fanfaronade

See also: Fanfaronade

English

Etymology

From French fanfaronnade (“bragging, boasting”); other senses influenced by fanfare.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˌfænfɛɹəˈneɪd/, /ˌfænfɛɹəˈnɑːd/,

Noun

fanfaronade (countable and uncountable, plural fanfaronades)

1. Empty, self-assertive boasting; an instance of such behaviour.
   • 1652, Thomas Urquhart, “Εκσκυβαλαυρον (The Jewel)”, in The Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, Knight‎^[1], Edinburgh: Thomas Maitland Dundrennan, published 1834, →ISBN, page 217:

     […] the Gasconads of France, Rodomontads of Spain, Fanfaronads of Italy, and Bragadochio brags of all other countries, could no more astonish his invincible heart, then would the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps.

   • 1828, Walter Scott, The Surgeon’s Daughter in Chronicles of the Canongate, Boston: Samuel H. Parker, p. 78,^[2]

     [he] was an enemy to every thing that approached to fanfaronade, and knew enough of the world to lay it down as a sort of general rule, that he who talks a great deal of fighting is seldom a brave soldier

   • 1988, William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill Volume II: Alone 1932-1940, page 63:

     Until 1932 they had been right. National Socialism had been a stigma. Among well-born Germans, the Nazi party was regarded as coarse. But that autumn, they were beginning to understand that the door of history had been shut on their Augustan Age of princes and potentates and plumed marshals and glittering little regular armies—on all the fanfaronade that had marked their disciplined, secure world.

   • 1997, Mordecai Richler, chapter 8, in Barney’s Version‎^[3], New York: Knopf, page 78:

     “Cedric took us out to celebrate his signing a contract for his novel, being so damned ostentatious about his new affluence. I didn't want to rain on his fanfaronade […] ”

2. Loud, showy display, celebration or proclamation (of something), sometimes involving the playing of trumpets or other musical instruments.

   Synonyms: blare, blast, fanfare, ostentation

   • 1850, John Miley, The History of the Papal States‎^[4], London: T.C. Newby, Volume 2, Book 2, Chapter 4, p. 302:

     With a fanfaronade of welcome they lowered their drawbridges

   • 1877, Frances Hodgson Burnett, That Lass o’ Lowrie’s, London: F. Warne, p. 55,^[5]

     he dined in public—a fanfaronade of trumpets proclaiming his down-sitting and his up-rising

   • 1904, C. N. Williamson, A. M. Williamson, The Lightning Conductor‎^[6], Toronto: McLeod & Allen, page 18:

     […] we sailed gracefully out of the hotel yard, Rattray too- tooing a fanfaronade on the horn.

   • 1955, Patrick Dennis, chapter 4, in Auntie Mame‎^[7], New York: Vanguard Press, page 69:

     Mrs. Burnside indicated her disapproval of all this with a fanfaronade of flatulence.

   • 2010, Ed Vulliamy, chapter 9, in Amexica‎^[8], New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 297:

     Here, at apparently reasonable prices, is a fanfaronade of cakes decorated electric pink, yellow, or blue.

Verb

fanfaronade (third-person singular simple present fanfaronades, present participle fanfaronading, simple past and past participle fanfaronaded)

1. (intransitive) To engage in empty, self-assertive boasting.
   • 1990, E. Grady Jolly, United States Circuit Judge, opinion regarding the matter of Clark Pipe & Supply Co., cited in Robert L. Jordan and William D. Warren, Bankruptcy, Westbury, NY: The Foundation Press, fourth edition, 1995, pp. 653-654,^[9]

     Given the agreement he was working under, his testimony was hardly more than fanfaronading about the power that the agreement afforded him over the financial affairs of Clark.

   • 2016, John Treadwell Nichols, chapter 1, in The Annual Big Arsenic Fishing Contest!‎^[10], Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, page 4:

     Call him an archetypal Texas bounder … with lots of mendacious savvy. Just before you blew him off as a fanfaronading blockhead, Bubba could flick a switch and start conversing about Federal Reserve interest rates, voter registration fraud in the deep South, and Kurt Vonnegut’s great novel, Slaughterhouse-Five.

2. (transitive, intransitive) To proclaim loudly; to promote enthusiastically.

   Synonym: trumpet

   • 1892, Robert Brown, The Story of Africa and Its Explorers, London: Cassell, Volume 1, Chapter 11, p. 208,^[11]

     Nowadays a returning traveller with half his merits is […] fanfaronaded every step of his homeward journey. The telegraph tells how he has arrived here, the special correspondent what he has to say there, until by the time he lands at Liverpool or Plymouth […] the interviewer and the illustrated journals have taken the heart out of any tale he may have to tell.

   • 1906, William John Locke, chapter 3, in The Beloved Vagabond‎^[12], New York: John Lane, page 37:

     […] I criticised her straight Teutonic fringe and fanfaronaded on the captivating frizziness of Joanna’s hair.

3. (intransitive) To make a noisy, showy display or celebration; to play a fanfare.
   • 1889, David Christie Murray, chapter 2, in Schwartz‎^[13], London: Macmillan, page 19:

     Even when the inhabitants of the village took to rising at four o'clock in the morning, and fanfaronaded with ill-blown bugles, and flaring torches, and a dreadful untiring drum about the street, I forbore to grumble,

References

• The Penguin English Dictionary 2nd Edition, 2003