Flaunting

ppl. a. That flaunts.

  1.  Waving gaily or proudly like a plume or a banner.

1623.  Massinger, Bondman, II. i.

1624.  R. Davenport, City Night-cap, III. i.

1634.  Milton, Comus, 543.

1681.  Moores Baffled, 24. In the Evening the Earl commanded a Squadron of Horse to fetch off the flanting Standard; who having bravely done it, it was set up upon the half-Bastion: which was no sooner perceived by the Moors, but they immediately marcht off, seeming much perplexed at this disgrace.

1809.  W. Irving, Knickerb. (1861), 55. Now would they be caught by the wanton eddies, and, sweeping round a jutting point, would wind deep into some romantic little cove, that indented the fair island of Manna-hata; now were they hurried narrowly by the very bases of impending rocks, mantled with the flaunting grape-vine, and crowned with groves that threw a broad shade on the waves beneath; and anon they were borne away into the mid-channel, and wafted along with a rapidity that very much discomposed the sage Van Kortlandt, who, as he saw the land swiftly receding on either side, began exceedingly to doubt that terra firma was giving them the slip.

a. 1839.  Praed, Poems (1864), II. 394, ‘Charades and Enigmas,’ viii.

  2.  Making an obtrusive display; showy, gaudy.

1567.  Turberville, To his Friend that refusde him, &c., Epitaphes, etc. (1870), 203.

1577.  Stanyhurst, Descr. Irel., in Holinshed, VI. 47. Vnlesse he taketh the man to be ouerlauish of his pen in frumping of his aduersaries with quipping tawnts, which (as I gesse) flowed rather from a flaunting ostentation of a roisting kind of rhetorike, than from anie great malice he bare anie one.

1660.  Pepys, Diary, 29 June. He told me in what high flaunting terms Sir J. Greenville had caused his [preamble] to be done, which he do not like.

1758.  Johnson, Idler, No. 28, 28 Oct., ¶ 3. Tho’ she was not as fine and as flaunting as Mrs. Ginghum, the Deputy’s Wife, she was not ashamed to tell her name, and would shew her face with the best of them.

1786.  Burns, To a Mountain Daisy, iv.

1829.  Lytton, Disowned, 13. A flaunting carpet, green, red, and yellow, covered the floor.

1847.  Alb. Smith, Chr. Tadpole, xxix. (1879), 258. A little dirty dingy public-house, so completely thrown into obscurity by two flaunting gin-shops at the corner, that the wonder was how it had contrived, within the very gleam of the costly lamps of its rivals, to exist as long as its aged appearance betokened.

1868.  Miss Braddon, Dead Sea Fr., I. xii. 254. I do not care for my neighbours. I cannot bring myself to sympathize with their serio-comic woes about recalcitrant butlers and flaunting housemaids.

1885.  Manch. Even. News, 10 Sept., 2/2. A strong effort was made to remove flaunting vice from the streets.

  Hence Flauntingly adv., in a flaunting manner.

1581.  Sidney, Astr. & Stella, li. 1, Poems (Grosart, 1877) I. 70.

1584.  R. Wilson, Three Ladies Lond., II. E ij.

a. 1693.  Urquhart, Rabelais, III. viii. 71. The more flauntingly to gallantrize it afterwards.

1874.  Burnand, My Time, xviii. 157. Across the road, on the farthest side from my window, stood at the edge of the kerb a flauntingly dressed woman.