- Today's Word
Vainglorious
[veyn-GLOR-ee-us]
Definition
- (noun) Someone who is excessively proud of their own achievements, abilities, or appearance. It refers to a person who is boastful and overly confident, often in a way that is irritating or offensive to others.
Example
The vainglorious CEO couldn’t stop talking about his company’s success, attributing every accomplishment to his own brilliance while ignoring the hard work of his team.
Fun Fact
The word “vainglorious” combines “vain,” meaning excessively proud of one’s appearance or achievements, and “glorious,” meaning deserving great admiration or praise. It has been in use since the 15th century, originating from the Latin “vana gloria” meaning “empty glory.” In medieval Christian theology, vainglory was considered one of the seven deadly sins, specifically a form of pride. Today, it’s often used to describe people who have an inflated sense of their own importance or accomplishments.
(adjective) Lacking substance, interest, or mature thought; naive and simplistic in a way that reveals inexperience.
The critic dismissed the debut novel as jejune — competently written, technically adequate, and utterly devoid of anything worth remembering.
Jejune derives from the Latin jejunus, meaning “fasting” or “empty” — literally describing a stomach that has not been fed. The same root gives us jejunum, the section of the small intestine named for its tendency to be found empty after death. It entered English in the 17th century carrying its literal sense of emptiness before acquiring its figurative meaning of something intellectually or creatively hollow — content that has the form of nourishment without any of the substance.