Flout vs. Flaunt

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Cirrus, calling from Oakland, California.

Cirrus.

Hi, Cirrus.

And welcome to the show.

Yes, exactly. It’s spelled the same way as the cloud.

Oh, really? That’s really cool.

Two R’s, then.

What can we do for you?

Well, I have a question for you regarding flout and flaunt.

Okay.

So, I had always used these two words, and they’re separate and what I understood to be correct meanings.

When you flout something, you’re ignoring it to blatantly disregard and to flaunt us to show off and to parade around.

But I had recently found out that there had, for quite a while, been some debate over misuse of these two words.

But then I came across in Act 2, Scene 2 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where this is after there’s been the whole switcheroo that’s gone on, and the lovers who were in love with each other are now getting all mixed up.

And Helena says to Demetrius, “Is it not enough, young man, that I did never, no, nor never can deserve a sweet look from Demetrius’ eye, but you must flout my insufficiency.”

Flout my insufficiency, okay.

And so it sounds like the wrong use of the word.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, there’s something interesting happening with flout here.

The modern use of flout, we think of, your definition of it was very good.

What was that again?

To flout, as in to just blatantly disregard.

Right, so you might flout a law or a rule.

But the larger, broader historical meaning of to flout is to show contempt towards something or someone.

And even more specifically, in more archaic uses, it meant to mock or to jeer at.

And so really what this line is saying is that must you jeer at my insufficiency, must you mock my insufficiency, rather than to show contempt exactly.

Oh, okay. It wouldn’t be proper then to say, but must you flaunt my insufficiency?

Right, exactly. They’re not flaunting here.

They’re flouting, but it’s an older meaning of flout that we tend not to really go back to much.

Oh, okay. That was actually a very simple fix.

Yeah. But, you know, I thought you were going to go down the whole road with flout versus flaunt here.

And I have a pretty good way to separate those.

You flaunt your bikini body, but you flout the rules if you do it in church.

Gotcha.

That’s how I think about that.

I’ll keep that in mind next time I put on my bikini bottom.

Yeah. All right. Send us a picture. Martha wants it.

Do. We’ll post it to our social media.

We’ll flaunt it.

We’ll put it on the word wall with flaunt and flaunt.

What are you doing reading Midsummer Night’s Dream?

Are you trying out for a role here?

Is this for schoolwork, just for pleasure?

No, it is as odd as it sounds, just for pleasure.

I enjoy Shakespeare.

No, no, that’s okay.

And at the end of the day, if I just feel like I need to unwind with something, it’s comfort food for me.

It’s familiar territory.

Oh, that’s very cool.

Do you have an annotated version?

And I’m guessing if you do have one, it doesn’t have a note on this particular use of the word.

I don’t actually have an annotated version, so that’s why I called about it.

Yeah, you might fish around.

I don’t know that they’re going to have this, but the annotated versions will save you from a lot of other places in Shakespeare where it looks like the modern word, but it’s not the modern word.

Yeah, the river song is really nice.

Cool. Thanks so much, Cirrus.

Thank you so much.

Take care now.

Bye.

Bye-bye.

Well, if you just happen to be reading old books like Shakespeare and you’ve got a question about how language was used way back when, this is the place to find out, 877-929-9673, or email words@waywordradio.org.