Crossword clues for ostentation
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ostentation \Os`ten*ta"tion\, n. [L. ostentatio: cf. F. ostentation.]
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The act of ostentating or of making an ambitious display; unnecessary show; pretentious parade; -- usually in a detractive sense. ``Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm.''
--Milton.He knew that good and bountiful minds were sometimes inclined to ostentation.
--Atterbury. -
A show or spectacle. [Obs.]
--Shak.Syn: Parade; pageantry; show; pomp; pompousness; vaunting; boasting. See Parade.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
mid-15c., from Old French ostentacion (mid-14c.) and directly from Latin ostentationem (nominative ostentatio) "showing, exhibition, vain display," noun of action from past participle stem of ostentare "to display," frequentative of ostendere "to show" (see ostensible).
Wiktionary
n. 1 Ambitious display; vain show; display intended to excite admiration or applause. 2 (context obsolete English) A show or spectacle.
WordNet
n. a showy outward display [syn: fanfare]
lack of elegance as a consequence of being pompous and puffed up with vanity [syn: ostentatiousness, pomposity, pompousness, pretentiousness, splashiness, inflation]
pretentious or showy or vulgar display
Usage examples of "ostentation".
Other points of view opened in succession--now a full one of the front of the old castle, and now a side glimpse at its particular towers, the former rich in all the bizarrerie of the Elizabethan school, while the simple and solid strength of other parts of the building seemed to show that they had been raised more for defence than ostentation.
Gaius Marius in all the vulgar ostentation of a gold-and-purple Chian outfit.
Haller was a learned man of the first class, but his knowledge was not employed for the purpose of ostentation, nor in private life, nor when he was in the company of people who did not care for science.
No wonder paganism seduces the commonfolk, who welcome any gaudery and ostentation that brightens their meager lives.
This ostentation, though puerile in itself, yet had a purpose, for I wished M.
Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art, even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably have lost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great works which excite our admiration.
Sundays after mass, he lingered to admire the groups dancing delicate sardanas, which to him seemed a perfect reflection of the solidarity, order, and lack of ostentation of the people of Barcelona.
These names refer to the morphology of the hip joint and ostentation of the pubis bone, which is more typically reptile-like in saurischians and is superficially like that of a bird in ornithischians.
Melrose felt an uncustomary surge of near-religious respect for such genius, so lacking in ostentation.
Adams is an aristocrat only in theory, but that Washington is one in practice--that Adams has the simplicity of a republican but that Washington has the ostentation of an eastern bashaw--that Adams holds none of his fellow men in slavery, but Washington does.
I am still convinced that the apparent ostentation would be more than compensated by real use.
He gave Gyoko a small leather bag containing ten koban, regretting the ostentation, but knowing his position demanded it.
One day, without consulting Legree, she suddenly took it upon her, with some considerable ostentation, to change all the furniture and appurtenances of the room to one at some considerable distance.
Those princes, whom the ostentation of gratitude or generosity permitted for a while to hold a precarious sceptre, were dismissed from their thrones, as soon as they had performed their appointed task of fashioning to the yoke the vanquished nations.
As the spirit of jealousy and ostentation prevailed in the councils of the emperors, they proceeded with anxious diligence to divide the substance and to multiply the titles of power.