Word of the Day

: September 3, 2021

gasconade

noun gas-kuh-NAYD

What It Means

Gasconade is confident talk or behavior that is intended to impress other people.

// After all his gasconade, the contestant couldn't manage to complete the obstacle race.

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gasconade in Context

"His malevolence was only equalled by his audacity,—and this was, if possible, surpassed by his gasconade." — Nathaniel Pitt Langford, Vigilante Days and Ways, 1996

Did You Know?

The citizens of Gascony in southwestern France have proverbially been regarded as prone to bragging. Their reputation has been immortalized in such swashbuckling literary works as Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. Linguistically, the legend survives in the word gascon, meaning "a swaggering person" or "braggart," as well as in gasconade itself.