boast
/bəʊst/
"boast" is a 5-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“boast” is a moderately-common English word, ranked #14,705 in English word frequency and used as a noun.
- #14,705
- frequency rank, English
- 5
- letters
- 6
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | boast |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /bəʊst/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #14,705 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “boast” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for boast is 5 letters long, classified as a noun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /bəʊst/. Corpus data places it at rank #14,705 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it. Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our generated misspelling index lists 6 likely wrong-spelling variants for boast, with forms such as "baost", "bboast", and "boasst". Each variant is a distinct typo pattern an edit-distance generator flags, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "bot", "boys", "boss", and more, since the words sound or look close enough that writers reach for the wrong one mid-sentence.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English bosten, from bost (“boast, glory, noise, arrogance, presumption, pride, vanity”), probably of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, swollen, puffed up, proud, arrogant, bad”). Cognate with Scots bost, … The correct English form is boast, spelled B-O-A-S-T.
Definition
- 1A brag; ostentatious positive appraisal of oneself.
- 2Something that one brags about.
- 3A shot where the ball is driven off a side wall and then strikes the front wall.
Etymology
From Middle English bosten, from bost (“boast, glory, noise, arrogance, presumption, pride, vanity”), probably of North Germanic origin, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *bausuz (“inflated, swollen, puffed up, proud, arrogant, bad”). Cognate with Scots bost, boist (“to threaten, brag, boast”), Anglo-Norman bost (“ostentation”) (from Germanic). Related to Norwegian baus (“proud, bold, daring”), dialectal German baustern (“to swell”), German böse (“evil, bad, angry”), Dutch boos (“evil, wicked, angry”), West Frisian boas (“bad, wicked, angry, shrewd, clever”). Compare also dialectal Norwegian bausta, busta (“to rush onward, make a noise”). Possible doublet of boost. Compare typologically puffy, Russian напы́щенный (napýščennyj), наду́тый (nadútyj).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: baost,bboast,boasst,boastt,bosat,obast
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of boast - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “boast”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is B-O-A-S-T - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /bəʊst/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “bot” - see the side-by-side comparison. boast vs bot
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.