swank

adj

1. Fashionably elegant, posh.

   “The fish house or shack is built without windows, covered with tar paper to keep out the light and wind, and set on the ice over about ten feet of water in a spot off shore where fish have been known to habitate habitually. […] A couple of boxes to sit on and a plank or mat for your feet and a small airtight stove, if you want swank comfort.”

   “"You live in that swank apartment round the corner." "Yes." "Hey you must be rich."”

   “You know it's swank when … It's very shiny / It's very tan / It's got Royale in its name”

   “[T]he Montgomery Block was the commercial and social center of San Francisco. […] Above [the ground floor] were a law library, the three rooms of the Mercantile Library Association, and a swank billiard room that ran nearly the entire length of the second floor.”

   “Mr. Heinz belonged to a very swank club in Pittsburgh.”

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A fashionably elegant person.

   “Us Morans don't like swanks, and that girl was a swank. Stuck-up rich girl. She wore a practically new gabardine with the same paper Union Jack flag as me, only hers was tucked into her coat buttonhole, behind a gold cat pasted with jewels.”

2. (countable, uncountable)Ostentation; bravado.

   “'It is mere swank sending it to us,' said he. 'We have to be there whatever happens, as the hangman said to the murderer.'”

   “Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat.”

   “Huge waves keep coming in over the front and I have seen the boat nearly go under any number of times. All the others pretend to take no notice of this, either from swank or because Harold says one of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to Facts.”

verb

1. To swagger, to show off.

   “Looks like she's going to swank in, flashing her diamonds, then swank out to another party.”

   “He was still an old galliard, with white Buffalo Bill vandyke, and he swanked around, still healthy of flesh, in white suits, looking things over with big sex-amused eyes.”

   “[Peter] O'Toole does for this movie [My Favorite Year] what [Alan] Swann does for the cast and crew of Comedy Cavalcade: he swanks in whenever there's a lull in the action and with a dapper flare of his cuffs sets off smiles, sighs, palpitations.”

   “With their innuendos and condemnations, with their loud-mouthed gabble, what a frighteningly learned lot they are – not quite clever, and not quite skilled. But still, it's woman's nature to swank; they swank because they're women, so let them swank. We won't take offence.”

   “He hung up my coat – my shabby, two-seasons-old Gap coat – and it looked like the scruffy kid in class next to the fawn cashmere number swanking on the neighbouring peg.”

name

1. A surname.