SWAGGERING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does swaggering mean? 

• SWAGGERING (adjective)
  The adjective SWAGGERING has 2 senses:

1. having or showing arrogant superiority to and disdain of those one views as unworthy

2. flamboyantly adventurous

  Familiarity information: SWAGGERING used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SWAGGERING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Having or showing arrogant superiority to and disdain of those one views as unworthy

Synonyms:

disdainful; haughty; imperious; lordly; overbearing; prideful; sniffy; supercilious; swaggering

Context example:

a more swaggering mood than usual

Similar:

proud (feeling self-respect or pleasure in something by which you measure your self-worth; or being a reason for pride)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Flamboyantly adventurous

Synonyms:

swaggering; swashbuckling

Similar:

adventuresome; adventurous (willing to undertake or seeking out new and daring enterprises)

 Context examples 

Even the hardy, swaggering half-breed seemed cowed.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was a raw-boned, swarthy-cheeked man, with black bristling beard and a swaggering bearing.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

He was a dashing, swaggering chap, smart and curled, who had seen half the world and could talk of what he had seen.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There was an ease in his manner—a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering—which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

In fact, his conduct approached that of a bully, and he was given to swaggering up and down before Spitz’s very nose.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Martin watched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breasted coat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum who had once been he.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pigtails, and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could not have been more delighted.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

He carried his head very jauntily in the air, had a swaggering style of walking, and was, above all else, remarkable for his extraordinary height.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Behind them a group of swaggering, half-drunken Yorkshire dalesmen, speaking a dialect which their own southland countrymen could scarce comprehend, their jerkins marked with the pelican, which showed that they had come over in the train of the north-country Stapletons.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)