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bravado
in a sentence

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  • The other is putting on a show of bravado.†   (source)
  • Kate asked, with a show of bravado.†   (source)
  • She wondered if Calvin realized that a lot of the arrogance was bravado.†   (source)
  • Hermione was staring at Ron, who refused to look at her, but said with an odd mixture of bravado and awkwardness, "Hi, Harry!†   (source)
  • The drink had broadened it a little, added bravado and hardness to it.†   (source)
  • "I—well, I should hope I'm more than just some simpering courtier," she said with as much bravado as she could muster.†   (source)
  • They speak of the schools with yearning and bravado; they want desperately to be selected.†   (source)
  • Shawn, who had done time in juvenile detention, as had Marley, said with bravado, "We goin' down to Arlington Avenue and whip somebody's butt!"†   (source)
  • And in that moment, with bravado borrowed from Jack, it is okay.†   (source)
  • Other men might reconsider words spoken in drunken bravado, but Robert Baratheon would remember and, remembering, would never back down.†   (source)
  • Ralph surprised himself, not so much by the quality of his voice, which was even, but by the bravado of its intention.†   (source)
  • Whatever Zaphod's qualities of mind might include—dash, bravado, conceit— he was mechanically inept and could easily blow the ship up with an extravagant gesture.†   (source)
  • As if they were kids again, coming home far too late from a party in his father's borrowed van: that same heady mix of bravado and fear of punishment.†   (source)
  • Mulch swallowed, his bravado suddenly deserting him.†   (source)
  • I'm all bravado.†   (source)
  • He had felt insane with bravado.†   (source)
  • And the descending mantle of guilt made her toss it off with even more bravado.†   (source)
  • The bravado was wearing off.†   (source)
  • We go into ops areas full of gung ho bravado, the way we're trained-Bring 'em on, we're ready!†   (source)
  • THERE HAD BEEN SO much energy, so much bravado, but now—nothing.†   (source)
  • This was what Idris had misgivings about, the fanfare, the flaunting, the unabashed showmanship, the bravado.†   (source)
  • Dushasana full of bravado one minute.†   (source)
  • Though I've always had a healthy sense of self, I knew this lecture needed more than just bravado.†   (source)
  • No energy was wasted on bravado or idle threats.†   (source)
  • He remembered the angry bravado with which he had once described this face-from-a-dream, telling the Reverend Mother Gains Helen Mohiam: "I will meet her."†   (source)
  • He shook the snow off and banged his tail against my knees, prancing about, all frisky and cocky, flush with the bravado of an adventurer just back from a jaunt through uncharted wilderness.†   (source)
  • Jaimito stopped rocking himself, his bravado deflated.†   (source)
  • The bravado he'd shown just moments ago was gone.†   (source)
  • She opened her mouth to reply, but his bravado left her speechless.†   (source)
  • "I like the feel of the wind on my face," I continued, hoping my bravado masked my terror of moving at speeds upward of sixty-five miles an hour with nothing standing between me and the road.†   (source)
  • Some pretended to ignore the horned warriors-although from the quickness of their motions and the shrill tones of their voices, Eragon could tell that the creatures unnerved them-while others glared at the Urgals and kept their hands on the pommels of their swords or daggers, and still others affected a false bravado and belittled the Urgals' notorious strength and boasted of their own.†   (source)
  • Drew looked up at her, the bravado fading just enough for Patrick to realize he was scared to death that they knew something more than they were admitting to him.†   (source)
  • Such bravado, Gaea hissed.†   (source)
  • Their bravado in the face of the bombings was not a sham.†   (source)
  • Ida watched with a bright, sardonic knowingness, as though the men on the stand were beating out a message she had commanded them to convey; but Vivaldo's head was slightly lowered and he looked up at the bandstand with a wry, uncertain bravado; as though there were an incipient war going on between himself and the musicians, having to do with rank and color and authority.†   (source)
  • I had been afraid, and spoke not from courage, but out of a kind of bravado.†   (source)
  • But That Day there was still enough Kristina left to feel humiliation, still a smattering of old-fashioned morals, somewhere inside' still a healthy dose of survival instinct, buried beneath a childhood, fractured by hormones, smashed by the monster's fist and pressed into memory by two-faced bravado.†   (source)
  • He'd shown us what a little bravado and courage could accomplish, and we thought he'd taught us how to use it.†   (source)
  • For all her bravado, though, I knew Sophie had her own problems.†   (source)
  • She thought: Maybe there's a relationship between bravado and cowardice.†   (source)
  • With false bravado I said, "Let's do this."†   (source)
  • But one-man cars get into less trouble because you reduce bravado.†   (source)
  • The music became suspenseful now, a series of diminished chords, perhaps a scary moment pending—and sure enough the orchestra reached the stage apron and dropped rather dramatically into the pit and then completely out of sight, elevatored down like so many geeks in tuxedos, a maneuver of a certain farcical bravado, greeted with cheers.†   (source)
  • Winning jockeys are daring jockeys, capable of gunning a horse through the narrowest hole with damn-thetorpedoes bravado.†   (source)
  • But Mortenson had enjoyed Janjungpa's company and his bravado, and mined him for stories about the dozens of expeditions he had led up the Baltoro.†   (source)
  • His bravado inspired others, who formed armed vigilante groups to patrol the state.†   (source)
  • After the tension, the anger, the bravado of her earlier state of mind, followed by the violence of Pilate's words to her granddaughter, this quiet social-tea tone disarmed her, threw her too soon and too suddenly back into the mannered dignity that was habitual for her.†   (source)
  • Harlon would soon be off to war, soon be a symbol to the world of male bravado.†   (source)
  • In the way he had talked about it, I knew there was as much bravado as there was real joy.†   (source)
  • Whatever bravado the companions' swords had birthed was swallowed up by common sense, and they dropped their weapons.†   (source)
  • His bravado had to mean that nobody was around for miles; nobody to help her in the godforsaken woods.†   (source)
  • He was the youngest of my uncles, and I always remembered him full of life and bravado.†   (source)
  • His stoic bravado had been replaced by this odd plea to the forest.†   (source)
  • "I heard the bullets whistle; and believe me there is something charming in the sound," he had written in a letter printed later in the London Magazine, which could be taken as the bravado of a callow youth, but, as he had found, he was one of those rare few who, under fire, were without fear.†   (source)
  • It was not foolish bravado, but genuine fury.†   (source)
  • The Jackal's challenger, the man of many appearances, the Chameleon-the killer known as Jason Bourne-was not given to fear, we are told, only a great bravado that came from his strength.†   (source)
  • Robert had let it drop, even though he felt that her bravado seemed intended more to convince herself than him.†   (source)
  • "Bite on this," the guard said, indulging in one last bleat of hopeless bravado, and then he did as he was told.†   (source)
  • I was sure this was some sort of bravado.†   (source)
  • She was sure of herself, with a serenity of confidence which made Rosalind's self-reliance seem almost bravado.†   (source)
  • They stood and looked down at the Endarkened, and Jace could feel the hesitation in their bravado.†   (source)
  • But they had trusted the sincerity of my wishes, and once again I had become a victim of my own fraudulent, pathetic bravado.†   (source)
  • His bravado warmed Grabeau's heart, but at the same time he couldn't help but think that soon they would all be dead.†   (source)
  • Everything hinged upon bravado, the bold and fearless gesture.†   (source)
  • I even put that on my passport, in a moment of bravado, since the other choice would have been housewife.†   (source)
  • Though I knew it was part of the bluster and bravado he displayed for his fellows, there was a casualness to his usage, as if he were speaking of any animal in a pen, which stopped me cold for a moment.†   (source)
  • Then, with familiar bravado, Kemp of Targos slowly rose from his seat.†   (source)
  • A half hour later, driving along in the dark silence, the anger and bravado I'd felt earlier started to subside.†   (source)
  • In a fit of blind bravado, I shoved the torch forward as far as my arm would reach.†   (source)
  • Yet despite his bravado, Frederic knew at once that he would put on the amulet.†   (source)
  • Randy watched her diminish, all allure, all bravado falling away, leaving her smaller and like a child.†   (source)
  • Turkeys seem to be manic-depressive types, gobbling with blushing wattles, spread tails, and scraping wings in amorous bravado at one moment and huddled in craven cowardice the next.†   (source)
  • In a moment of bravado, just before she goes, Anybodys spits-but cautiously.†   (source)
  • Sometime, somewhere, without Hodge's knowing it was happening, Will had turned his mother's trick to his own use: had made that antic, orbicular language the shield of bravado between himself and a world he did not trust.†   (source)
  • And this the wind does not out of bravado Or in a senseless rage, But so that in its desolation It may find words to fashion a lullaby for you.†   (source)
  • But the little manyou were startled by a look of bravado on his face.†   (source)
  • There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused.   (source)
  • What d'you think I was doing?" asked Harry with feeble bravado.†   (source)
  • He grimaced, trying to cover the pain with a thin attempt at bravado.†   (source)
  • Burnham's clear relief suggests that his earlier bravado might have been just for show.†   (source)
  • With more bravado than he feels, Lale says, "Not yet I don't, but I hope to."†   (source)
  • Something more than a good singing voice and manly bravado.†   (source)
  • "Check this out!" he said with bravado as he waved the knife in the air.†   (source)
  • The joking bravado vanished from his face, revealing my Jacob underneath, like pulling a mask away.†   (source)
  • Despite her bravado, however, Constance was so weak she toppled forward when she tried to stand.†   (source)
  • With nothing but my good singing voice and your manly bravado?†   (source)
  • I'd been ready for a muscular thug and negotiations filled with thinly veiled threats and bravado.†   (source)
  • Further, with amazing bravado, Franklin asked Vergennes for a loan of 6 million livres.†   (source)
  • He knew he had won when the captain's shoulders drooped and the bravado faded from his bearing.†   (source)
  • He was pale now, his bravado gone; his hands, clenched into fists, were white at the knuckles.†   (source)
  • The whisky bravado that tells you you can do it.†   (source)
  • Don Ruhl's eccentric bravado finally got the better of him.†   (source)
  • "This is no time for juvenile bravado," Tradd said.†   (source)
  • It was the false safety of numbers that gave the three officers the bravado to rush the car.†   (source)
  • It'll make for an exciting show," said Simon, with more bravado than he really felt.†   (source)
  • "Two of us, and one of you," Magwich repeated with shaky bravado.†   (source)
  • " "We'll see," said Adam, and he started out, swinging his arms with bravado.†   (source)
  • They were just full of bravado, shouting, boasting they would in the end kill every American in their country and then some …We will kill you all!†   (source)
  • He'd stand silhouetted in the grainy light of the bedroom, and though all of us were supposed to be asleep, and pretended to be, we were rapt, awed by his cheer and bravado.†   (source)
  • "I like your manly bravado," she said.†   (source)
  • Fewer still were forcing laughter from tight throats, false bravados that emphasized their insecurity rather than disguising it.†   (source)
  • It was then, sometimes, that their bravado would fail, and he'd catch a glimpse of the terrified woman beneath the angry surface.†   (source)
  • And there it was, just as she was coming up the walk, the plaintive whine: Lewis lost his new bravado and returned to his old self.†   (source)
  • This was far more than retaliation for the district attorney's bravado in swearing to bring him to justice.†   (source)
  • You want bravado?†   (source)
  • She had regained her equilibrium in the intervening months, and the difference between that terrified girl and this slightly macho, bravado-filled convict was striking.†   (source)
  • I sat there sipping it slowly, trying to decide whether I wanted to tell my wife that for all these years, despite all the macho bravado, she'd really been married to a scared little boy trying to prove to himself he wasn't a coward.†   (source)
  • "Make no mistake," he declared, his voice thick with bravado, "we will fight to the finish if we are attacked.†   (source)
  • No false bravado from me.†   (source)
  • It fell to Kirsten to take care of things around the house, like cleaning and making our lunches, when my mom wasn't up to it, which she did with her usual bravado, as if nothing was wrong at all.†   (source)
  • In the two seats beside me are two old ladies, old women, each with a knitted cardigan, each with yellowy-white hair and thick-lensed glasses with a chain for around the neck, each with a desiccated mouth lipsticked bright red with bravado.†   (source)
  • I was fresh out of bravado.†   (source)
  • I was expecting more bravado.†   (source)
  • But whereas a puppy will cringe away or roll on its back, groveling, a little boy may cover his shyness with nonchalance, with bravado, or with secrecy.†   (source)
  • (then with a forced grin of bravado) Still, you never know when it might come in handy.†   (source)
  • Ruthie, in a burst of bravado, boosted her skirt and sat down.†   (source)
  • PARRITT—(puts on an act of dramatic bravado—forcing a grin) Sure, I will, Hugo!†   (source)
  • Then, with an air of bravado, he added: "What's more, the plague suits me quite well and I see no reason why I should bother about trying to stop it.†   (source)
  • It should be of the highest interest," Anselmo said and hearing him say it honestly and clearly and with no pose, neither the English pose of understatement nor any Latin bravado, Robert Jordan thought he was very lucky to have this old man and having seen the bridge and worked out and simplified the problem it would have been to surprise the posts and blow it in a normal way, he resented Golz's orders, and the necessity for them.†   (source)
  • —that hated him, that had always hated him, yet choosing her with a kind of outrageous bravado as if a kind of despairing conviction of his irresistibility or invulnerability were a part of the price he had got for whatever it was he had sold the Creditor since according to the old dame he never had had a soul; proposed to her and was accepted—then three months later, with no date ever set for the wedding and marriage itself not mentioned one time since, and on the very day when he…†   (source)
  • The condemned pilots, with their lust for the life and love which is probably to be lost so soon, touch the hearts of young women, or possibly call up an answering bravado.†   (source)
  • It was all bravado: passionless and therefore unreal.†   (source)
  • As they walked into the elevator Amory considered a piece of bravado—yielded finally.†   (source)
  • The answer was so cool, so rich in bravado, that somehow it took the wind out of his sails.†   (source)
  • "As many as you like," the director replied with embarrassed bravado.†   (source)
  • Nothing was farther from Venters's mind than bravado.†   (source)
  • Her little bravado made her feel as if she ought to make amends.†   (source)
  • "But you know how that was, Bert," he replied, with almost an air of bravado.†   (source)
  • One or two slight rebuffs, and the bravado disappeared.†   (source)
  • There was no longer any deceit or bravado in the manner of the accused.†   (source)
  • The emphasis on that phrase may have been simply bravado.†   (source)
  • And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm.†   (source)
  • From bravado perhaps …. at having wasted so much money….†   (source)
  • This piece of bravado produced its effects,—the spell of the beam was broken.†   (source)
  • So I have been drinking, and blaspheming, or next door to it, and saying holy things in disreputable quarters—repeating in idle bravado words which ought never to be uttered but reverently!†   (source)
  • It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado.†   (source)
  • "Chauvelin," said Marguerite Blakeney at last, quietly, and without that touch of bravado which had characterised her attitude all along, "Chauvelin, my friend, shall we try to understand one another.†   (source)
  • In the itch to let his instructors know how heartily he despised them and their homilies, and how thoroughly he was appreciated elsewhere, he mentioned once or twice that he had no time to fool with theorems; adding--with a twitch of the eyebrows and a touch of that nervous bravado which so perplexed them--that he was helping the people down at the stock company; they were old friends of his.†   (source)
  • They may add, too, that at Trafalgar it was in effect nothing less than a challenge to death; and death came; and that but for his bravado the victorious Admiral might possibly have survived the battle; and so, instead of having his sagacious dying injunctions overruled by his immediate successor in command, he himself, when the contest was decided, might have brought his shattered fleet to anchor, a proceeding which might have averted the deplorable loss of life by shipwreck in the…†   (source)
  • He said it with admirable serenity, with positive unimpeachable gaiety; and doubtless it was that very note that most evoked for me the poignancy, the unnatural childish tragedy, of his probable reappearance at the end of three months with all this bravado and still more dishonor.†   (source)
  • Her manner, as Clyde could see, while much less suggestive of masked bravado was yielding and to him designedly so, as well as naturally provocative.†   (source)
  • For in those days she was completely reckless; did the most idiotic things out of bravado; bicycled round the parapet on the terrace; smoked cigars.†   (source)
  • This was contradicted, and the rumour circulated that it was a young merchant who had come into the enormous fortune and married the great ballet dancer, and that at the wedding the drunken young fool had burned seventy thousand roubles at a candle out of pure bravado.†   (source)
  • On the first day of his life as a strikebreaker Jurgis quit work early, and in a spirit of bravado he challenged three men of his acquaintance to go outside and get a drink.†   (source)
  • And none—whatever the bravado—capable of enduring it without mental or physical deterioration in some form.†   (source)
  • The obvious terror and depression—constant and unshakeable of those who, in spite of all their courage or their fears, their bravado or their real indifference (there were even those) were still compelled to think and wait.†   (source)
  • Returning to one of the lesser stores in a side street, in which a moment before he had observed an undersized chemist idling about, he entered, and summoning all the bravado he could muster, began: "I want to know something.†   (source)
  • Carried away by a bravado which was three-fourths her conception of him as a member of the Lycurgus upper crust and possessor of means and position, he led the way into a corner and began at once to illustrate the respective movements.†   (source)
  • Poor Catherine was not defiant; she had no genius for bravado; and as she felt that her father viewed her companion's attentions with an unsympathising eye, there was nothing but discomfort for her in the accident of seeming to challenge him.†   (source)
  • But a minute later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed slyness and affectation of bravado, he glanced at Raskolnikov, laughed and said: "This morning I went to see Sonia, I went to ask her for a pick-me-up!†   (source)
  • The width of the stream was too great to admit of the use of the ordinary Indian missiles, but a few useless shots were exchanged from the fusees of the chiefs, more in bravado than with any expectation of doing execution.†   (source)
  • He no longer intended to trust himself among the English, for he had discovered traces of distrust, particularly in Pathfinder; and, with Indian bravado, he now rather wished to blazon than to conceal his treachery.†   (source)
  • As a young girl she had spent hours with her back to her mirror, crying her eyes out; and later she had from desperation and bravado adopted the habit of proclaiming herself the most ill-favored of women, in order that she might—as in common politeness was inevitable—be contradicted and reassured.†   (source)
  • You think you carry it off very well, I dare say, but with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern; I always observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances.†   (source)
  • Wilson's rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment;--the more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him, and could not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual struggle.†   (source)
  • Get thy wounds healed, purvey thee a better horse, and it may be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of thee this boyish spirit of bravado.†   (source)
  • I hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of it again.†   (source)
  • March had no other motive in landing than a senseless bravado, and having shaken the door in a manner to put its solidity to the proof, he joined Hutter in the canoe and began to aid him in opening the gate.†   (source)
  • Beside her stood a young man of imposing mien, although partaking somewhat of vanity and bravado—one of those handsome fellows whom all women agree to admire, although grave men learned in physiognomy shrug their shoulders at them.†   (source)
  • Such a paradox they could not understand, and therefore sank into listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless bravado.†   (source)
  • There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring, and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to bundle himself off with his beggarly traps.†   (source)
  • And now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"†   (source)
  • "There she breaches! there she breaches!" was the cry, as in his immeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to Heaven.†   (source)
  • She took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love, out of bravado and with rage in her heart.†   (source)
  • As time went on, it might have appeared to the Doctor that his daughter's account of her rupture with Morris Townsend, mere bravado as he had deemed it, was in some degree justified by the sequel.†   (source)
  • He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado.†   (source)
  • Kolya, who was almost the youngest of the party and rather looked down upon by the others in consequence, was moved by vanity or by reckless bravado to bet them two roubles that he would lie down between the rails at night when the eleven o'clock train was due, and would lie there without moving while the train rolled over him at full speed.†   (source)
  • I cannot help thinking, men of Athens, that Meletus is reckless and impudent, and that he has written this indictment in a spirit of mere wantonness and youthful bravado.†   (source)
  • "Well," I said, with attempted bravado, "I suppose being burned is better than freezing to death."†   (source)
  • "You can't make me do this, you know," I hissed threateningly at Murtagh's back as I followed him downstairs, but he and I both knew my words were empty bravado.†   (source)
  • Jealously admiring them, Hamish's better judgment was finally overcome by bravado, and he had tried to force his fat little pony over a stone fence.†   (source)
  • The viceroy, however, begged him earnestly not to hang them, as their behaviour savoured rather of madness than of bravado.†   (source)
  • So far did his unparalleled madness go; but the noble lion, more courteous than arrogant, not troubling himself about silly bravado, after having looked all round, as has been said, turned about and presented his hind-quarters to Don Quixote, and very coolly and tranquilly lay down again in the cage.†   (source)
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