flouting

Pluralfloutings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of flout.

   Several restaurants were caught flouting health regulations during the inspection.

   The company was fined for openly flouting the court's order to stop construction.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. As a participle it builds progressive tenses and takes its object directly: caught flouting health rules, openly flouting a court order. As a gerund it names the action while keeping that object: flouting the curfew cost them a fine. Put the or a possessive in front and add of, and it becomes the noun for the act.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The act of openly disregarding a rule, law, or standard, showing contempt for it.

   Critics condemned the government's flagrant flouting of international law.

   Repeated floutings of the ceasefire made a lasting agreement unlikely.

   Similarviolation, breach, disregard, defiance, contravention

   Oppositeobservance, compliance

   Note

   A countable noun, so it can be plural: repeated floutings of a ceasefire. It usually takes of before whatever is disregarded, and words of degree sit naturally in front, such as flagrant, open or repeated. In the study of conversation it names the open breaking of a maxim; Scott Brewer (2013) writes of implicatures overcoming apparent floutings of the maxims of quality.

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