Jactitation is an old noun for the act of making or spreading a false claim in public. The word is rare today, but it appears in older legal and historical writing.
One especially important use was jactitation of marriage. That meant falsely claiming that you were married to someone, then repeating that claim to other people. This was not just private lying. The idea was a public assertion that could damage another person’s reputation or create confusion about legal status.
For example, if a man went around telling neighbors, She is my wife, when no marriage existed, that could be called jactitation. In older law, the falsely named person could sometimes bring a legal action to stop the claim.
More broadly, jactitation can also refer to boastful or false public assertion. In that wider sense, it is close to words like bragging or false proclamation, though the marriage sense is the one most often noted in historical sources.
- Specific older use: falsely claiming marriage to someone.
- Broader sense: making a public false claim in a boastful way.