sb. (a.). Also 7 fanfaroone, -rrone. 8 -ran, 9 -roon. [F. fanfaron, f. fanfare.]
1. A blusterer, boaster, braggart.
1622. Mabbe, trans. Aleman’s Guzman d’Alf., II. 62. They should not play the Fanfarrones, roysting and swaggering where e’re they come.
1694. R. L’Estrange, Fables, cl. 137. There are Fanfarons in the Tryals of Wit too, as well as in Feats of Arms.
1754. H. Walpole, Lett. H. Mann (1834), III. cclviii. 78. An excellent fanfaron, a Major Washington.
1861. Sala, Dutch Pictures, xix. 297. I … always set him down as a vapouring fanfaroon.
b. Const. of. One who makes a parade of something; a trumpeter of.
1857. Fonblanque, Life & Lab. (1874), 273. He is a little fanfaron of his virtues.
1880. McCarthy, Own Times, I. ii. 27. He became the fanfaron of levities which he never had.
c. attrib. or adj. Braggart, boastful.
1670–98. Lassels, Voy. Italy, I. Pref. He must learn of the French, to become any Clothes well; but he must not follow them in all their Phantastical and fanfaron Clothings.
1716. M. Davies, Athenæ Britannicæ, III., Diss. upon Pallas Anglic., 13. These Fanfaran or Thrasonick Romists boasts of the Number of their Converts, or rather Perverts of those Times.
1831. Soc. Life Eng. & France, ii. 74. Blood … seems to have been a sort of fanfaron assassin.
¶ 2. = FANFARE.
1848. Lytton, Harold, II. IX. ii. 298. Amidst a loud fanfaron of fifes and trumpets.
