This week we continue our vocabulary-building series, “The Closing Word.” Each week we provide a new word to help build your vocabulary and show you an example of how to use it.
This week’s closing word:
flout
Pronounced: (FLOUT)
Verb:
1. treat with contemptuous disregard
2. laugh at with contempt and derision
From Vocabulary.com: “Flaunt is to show off, but flout is to ignore the rules. Oddly enough, when flout came into existence in the 1550s, it had a much different sense to it than it does now; it’s believed that it evolved from the Middle English flowten ”to play the flute.” As a verb, it means to scorn, as in, for example, to scorn a law, person, or social norm by defying it. As a noun, it is a contemptuous remark or insult. Wrote William Shakespeare, “Flout ‘em, and scout ‘em; and scout ‘em and flout ‘em; Thought is free.”
Example:
“It has now come to light that during the mortgage crisis, certain banks floutedforeclosure laws.”
