boast

Meanings

1. A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
2. Something that one brags about.
3. A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.

1. To brag; to talk loudly in praise of oneself.
2. (used with "about" or "of") To speak of with pride, vanity, or exultation, with a view to self-commendation; to extol.
3. To speak in exulting language of another; to glory; to exult.
4. To play a boast shot.
5. To possess (a special and desirable quality).

1. To dress, as a stone, with a broad chisel.
2. To shape roughly as a preparation for the finer work to follow; to cut to the general form required.

Etymology

From Middle English bosten, from bost (“boast, glory, noise, arrogance, presumption, pride, vanity”), probably of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, swollen, puffed up, proud, arrogant, bad”). Cognate with Scots bost, boist (“to threaten, brag, boast”), Anglo-Norman bost (“ostentation”) (from Germanic). Related to Norwegian baus (“proud, bold, daring”), dialectal German baustern (“to swell”), German böse (“evil, bad, angry”), Dutch boos (“evil, wicked, angry”), West Frisian boas (“bad, wicked, angry, shrewd, clever”). Compare also dialectal Norwegian bausta, busta (“to rush onward, make a noise”). Possible doublet of boost. Compare typologically puffy, Russian напы́щенный (napýščennyj), наду́тый (nadútyj).