fanfaronade

From French fanfaronnade.

fanfaronade (countable and uncountable, plural fanfaronades)

1. Empty, self-assertive boasting.
   • 1652, Thomas Urquhart, “Εκσκυβαλαυρον (The Jewel)”, in The Works of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, Knight‎, Edinburgh: Thomas Maitland Dundrennan, published 1834, →ISBN, page 217:

     […] the Gasconads of France, Rodomontads of Spain, Fanfaronads of Italy, and Bragadochio brags of all other countries, could no more astonish his invincible heart, then would the cheeping of a mouse a bear robbed of her whelps.

   • (Can we date this quote?), William Manchester, Winston Churchill: The Last Lion, Volume II: Alone 1932-1940, page 63:

     Until 1932 they had been right. National Socialism had been a stigma. Among well-born Germans, the Nazi party was regarded as coarse. But that autumn, they were beginning to understand that the door of history had been shut on their Augustan Age of princes and potentates and plumed marshals and glittering little regular armies--on all the fanfaronade that had marked their disciplined, secure world.

fanfaronade (third-person singular simple present fanfaronades, present participle fanfaronading, simple past and past participle fanfaronaded)

1. To engage in empty, self-assertive boasting.

• The Penguin English Dictionary 2nd Edition, 2003