gasconade

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 26, 2010 is: gasconade • \gas-kuh-NAYD\  • noun : bravado or exaggerated boasting Examples: "Honesty and frankness do more for the public's confidence … than extravagant boasting or supercilious gasconade." (F. Gonzalez-Crussi, The New York Times, April 7, 2002) 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 "braggart," as well as in "gasconade" itself. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.