Ostentation is the showing-off itself: when someone makes a point of letting you see how rich, clever, or important they are, so that you will admire them. A gold watch waved about in a cheap café, the name of a university dropped into every sentence, a party that exists mainly to be photographed — that is ostentation. It is almost always a critic’s word. We accuse other people of it; we rarely admit to it ourselves. It feels formal and a little old-fashioned, more at home in a book or a sharp comment than in everyday chat, where people are more likely to say showing off. You can talk about ostentation of wealth or of learning; both are the same habit, just with different props. Though actually, it is not the same as ostensible. One is a cover story. This one is a display. They share an old Latin “show”, but they took different roads.

炫耀、鋪張