Ostentatious

os-ten-tey-shuh s

adjective

characterized by vulgar or pretentious display; designed to impress or attract notice

The word 'ostentatious' originates from the Latin word 'ostentare', meaning 'to display'. It is commonly used to describe something that is overly showy or pretentious in order to gain attention or impress others.

They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time with ostentatious formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife’s offers of refreshment.

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice

In the less ostentatious house, No.

Mark Twain

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

“Who is the lady?” “Now, don’t let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, “because I know you don’t mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance.

Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities

Wylis was quiet and formal, Wendel loud and boisterous; both had ostentatious walrus mustaches and heads as bare as a baby’s bottom; neither seemed to own a single garment that was not spotted with food stains.

George R. R. Martin

A Game Of Thrones

Profound suffering makes noble: it separates.—One of the most refined forms of disguise is Epicurism, along with a certain ostentatious boldness of taste, which takes suffering lightly, and puts itself on the defensive against all that is sorrowful and profound.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil

He was wearing a rather ostentatious pinky-ring on his left hand.

Stephen King

Insomnia

What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish?

Herman Melville

Moby Dick

Don’t be ostentatious.

Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises

A great deal of the metaphor and of the sentiment is obscure, most probably by translation; but enough is left to show they were strongly pointed in the original.62 From what is transmitted to us of the character of Solomon, he was witty, ostentatious, dissolute, and at last melancholy.

Thomas Paine

The Age of Reason

On the days when he won he was insolent and ostentatious; if he lost, he disappeared completely for several days, after which he reappeared with a pale face and thinner person, but with money in his purse.

Alexandre Dumas

The Three Musketeers

It's just totally ostentatious.

Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash

For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.

Marcus Aurelius

Meditations

‘I couldn’t agree with you more, sir,’ he assented briskly in a tone of ostentatious disapproval.

Heller, Joseph

Catch-22

The proud minister of an ostentatious court may frequently take pleasure in executing a work of splendour and magnificence, such as a great highway, which is frequently seen by the principal nobility, whose applauses not only flatter his vanity, but even contribute to support his interest at court.

Adam Smith

The Wealth of Nations