Thursday, November 9, 2017

Narcissism

Narcissism

The word narcissist is getting a lot of play these days. The word appears to have been coined by Coleridge in 1822, but didn’t catch on until 1905. Narcissism means to show extreme love & admiration for oneself. The word comes from the Greek story of a young man who fell in love with his own reflection.

Other terms or idioms & their meanings include:

To be full of oneself  — to be annoyingly self-focused.

To have a swelled head  —  to have an exaggerated sense of self-importance.

The word egotist arrived in 1714 meaning one who makes too-frequent use of the first person. Since then it has morphed into meaning one who is boastful & conceited.

As of 1969, we began to say a person enthralled with him/herself was on an ego trip.

Or there’s the academic term from 1890 — egocentric — meaning limited in outlook or concern to one’s own activities or interests.

A more colorful term arriving in the 1520s is cocksure, a person as assured of himself as a barnyard rooster. A century or so later cocksure began to mean arrogant & overconfident to the point of annoyance. It seems DH LAwrence offered a “feminine version” of this word, but for some reason hensure never caught on.

And back in 1835 Davy Crockett gave us too big for your britches/breeches, an idiom he applied to General Andrew Jackson, a man Crockett believed overvalued himself.

In 1991, English received a contemporary version of too big for your britches courtesy of the British musical group Right Said Fred. Their first hit song was inspired by the self-infatuation of mirror-gazers at the gym & gave us the idiom too sexy for your shirt

Comments? You know what to do.





4 comments:

  1. "Cocksure" is such a great word. We need to revive it!

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    1. Ha! The word "cocksure" has always made me moderately uncomfortable. It's a perfectly good word, but has the same effect on me as another perfectly good word -- niggardly -- I just feel somehow unclean uttering it.

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  2. I like that egotism simply means speaking in the first person too much. Never thought of it that way, but that's perfect. You will notice the first person pronoun was left out of that last sentence. Not wanting to appear egotistical. Just did it again!

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    1. Superb job of anti-egotism language, Chirstine! Thanks.

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