Ostent
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A display, an exhibition; an appearance, a manifestation. archaic, rare
"Vſe all the obſeruance of ciuility, / Like one well ſtudied in a ſad oſtent / To pleaſe his Grandam, neuer truſt me more."
- 2 A portent, a token. archaic, rare
"We ask'd of God that some ostent might clear / Our cloudy business, who gave us sign."
- 3 One sixtieth of an hour: a minute (60 seconds). historical, obsolete
"[…] one would be inclined to suspect some confusion in Bede's information, seeing that 40 moments and 60 ostents both are equal to an hour. I cannot find an example of the use of ostentum as a measure of time before Bede, and it is first used as one-sixtieth of an hour in 978 A.D. by Alcuin, who knows a double use."
- 4 A boastful, ostentatious display or exhibition.
- 1 To make an ambitious display of; to exhibit or show boastingly; to ostentate. ambitransitive, obsolete
Example
More examples"Vſe all the obſeruance of ciuility, / Like one well ſtudied in a ſad oſtent / To pleaſe his Grandam, neuer truſt me more."
Etymology
From Middle French ostenter (“to make an ostentatious display of”), or directly from its etymon Latin ostentāre (“to exhibit, present, show; to show off”), frequentative of ostendere (“to exhibit, show”), from ob- (prefix meaning ‘against; towards’) + tendere (“to extend, stretch; to distend”) (from Proto-Indo-European *tend- (“to extend, stretch”)). Doublet of ostentate.
From Latin ostentus (“a display, exhibition, show”), from ostendere (“to exhibit, show”); see further at etymology 1.
From Middle French ostente (“amazing or marvellous thing; prodigy, wonder”) or directly from its etymon Latin ostentum (“portent”), from ostendere (“to exhibit, show”); see further at etymology 1. The plural form ostenta is from Latin ostenta.
Perhaps from Latin ostentum.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.