• (RP) IPA: /vɔːnt/
• (some accents) IPA: /vɑːnt/
• (America) IPA: /vɔnt/
• (cot-caught) IPA: /vɑnt/

vaunt (vaunts, present participle vaunting; past and past participle vaunted)

1. (intransitive) To speak boastfully.
   • 1829 — Washington Irving, Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada, chapter XC

     "The number," said he, "is great, but what can be expected from mere citizen soldiers? They vaunt and menace in time of safety; none are so arrogant when the enemy is at a distance; but when the din of war thunders at the gates they hide themselves in terror."

2. (transitive) To speak boastfully about.
3. (transitive) To boast of; to make a vain display of; to display with ostentation.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, 1 Cor Cor-Chapter-xiii/#4 xiii:4 ↗:

     Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.

   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 3”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     My vanquisher, spoiled of his vaunted spoil.

• (speak boastfully) boast, brag

vaunt (plural vaunts)

1. A boast; an instance of vaunting.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book 4”, in Paradise Lost. A Poem Written in Ten Books, London: Printed [by Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […] [a]nd by Robert Boulter […] [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], OCLC 228722708 ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: The Text Exactly Reproduced from the First Edition of 1667: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, OCLC 230729554 ↗:

     the spirits beneath, whom I seduced / with other promises and other vaunts

   • 1904, G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book II, chapter III

     He has answered me back, vaunt for vaunt, rhetoric for rhetoric.

• French: vantardise
• Russian: хвастовство́

vaunt (plural vaunts)

1. (obsolete) The first part.