ostent
/ˈɑstɛnt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A boastful, ostentatious display or exhibition.
Example Sentences
- "Vſe all the obſeruance of ciuility, / Like one well ſtudied in a ſad oſtent / To pleaſe his Grandam, neuer truſt me more."
- "Be merry, and employ your cheefeſt thoughts / To Courtſhip, and ſuch faire oſtents of loue, / As ſhall conueniently become you there."
- "In every object, mountain, tree and star—In every birth and life, / As part of each—evolv'd from each—meaning, behind the ostent, / A mystic cipher waits infolded."
- "We ask'd of God that some ostent might clear / Our cloudy business, who gave us sign."
- "Latinus, frighted with this dire ostent, / For counsel to his father Faunus went,"
- "[…] one would be inclined to suspect some confusion in Bede's information, seeing that 40 moments and 60 ostents both are equal to an hour. I cannot find an example of the use of ostentum as a measure of time before Bede, and it is first used as one-sixtieth of an hour in 978 A.D. by Alcuin, who knows a double use."
Etymology
From Middle French ostenter (“to make an ostentatious display of”), or directly from its etymon Latin ostentāre (“to exhibit, present, show; to show off”), frequentative of ostendere (“to exhibit, show”), from ob- (prefix meaning ‘against; towards’) + tendere (“to extend, stretch; to distend”) (from Proto-Indo-European *tend- (“to extend, stretch”)). Doublet of ostentate.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɑstɛnt/
- British English: /ˈɒstɛnt/