Vault - vaunt - flaunt - flout - flounce

Here is a group of superficially similar words that seem to cause a lot of confusion. The problem seems to be that these terms are not common enough for us to use them confidently, and they carry no intrinsic clues to their meaning.

A recent BBC News report on certain ‘problem customers’ of water companies told us that they were “flaunting the rules” about payment. They meant ‘flout’(= to treat a rule with contempt) – a word ‘of obscure origin’, as the dictionaries say.

‘Flaunt’ means to display something boastfully, to show it off – whether it’s your jewellery or your knowledge or your sexuality – and is also o.o.o. (though it may have originated as a merging of two of the other words in this group, ‘flout’ and ‘vaunt’).

‘To vaunt’ means to boast: strictly speaking, to make an empty boast, being derived ultimately from Latin vanitas meaning emptiness. Compare our related word ‘vain’, which has different meanings in the phrases ‘all in vain’ and ‘don’t be so vain’*.

* Mrs Thatcher once quoted from the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes the statement “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”, apparently believing that ‘vanity’ there meant ‘showing off’. It can do so, of course, in modern English: but the context (which Mrs T should have known) shows that in the seventeenth century language of the King James Bible, the term means ‘worthlessness, pointlessness’.

The verb ‘to vault’ (derived from Latin volvo/volut-- = to roll) can of course mean jumping over an obstacle with a long pole; but it can also be used metaphorically to signify ‘aiming to jump high’, as in the cliché ‘vaulting ambition’. But even this seems to have a hint of ‘vaunting’ and ‘flaunting’: the term ‘vaunting ambition’ has occasionally been used by mistake, but it still makes good (if different) sense.

‘Flounce’ can be a noun (from Old French fronce meaning a pleat) meaning a fancy frill of pleated material decorating a garment: even this word has (but only by association with similar terms) overtones of ‘flaunting extroversion’. The verb ‘to flounce’ appears to be of different origin (o.o.o. again), and describes movement with exaggerated qualities: “she flounced out of the room”. You can almost hear the rustle of her frilly dress: but you shouldn’t – you’re being influenced by the wrong word !

It is amazing how similar sounding words can absorb ‘flavours’ from one another.

Vault – vaunt – flaunt – flout - flounce