Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A conceited, boastful person.
  • noun A selfish, self-centered person.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who is characterized by egotism, in either sense of that word.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One addicted to egotism; one who speaks much of himself or magnifies his own achievements or affairs.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A person who talks excessively about himself
  • noun A person who believes in his own importance or superiority.
  • noun An egoist.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a conceited and self-centered person

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

ego + t ("inserted to avoid hiatus, or after the analogy of dramatist, epigrammatist, etc.") + -ist

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word egotist.

Examples

  • In his secret heart the egotist is a self-despiser.

    The Glory of the Trenches Coningsby Dawson 1921

  • I suppose that the egotist is the man who regards the world as a setting for himself, as opposed to the man who realizes that he is

    From a College Window Arthur Christopher Benson 1893

  • Wright rhymes "exist" with "egotist" - the very quality of human existence creates an ego that leads us to disbelieve our own being and that of those around us.

    English-writing Israeli-bloggers 2008

  • It's not my fault he's too cheap to fund a proper office, but his snide, arrogant denials show exactly what kind of egotist he is.

    Archive 2004-06-01 2004

  • The error was caused by my reliance on a dictionary which gave such misleading definitions of these two words that "egotist" seemed closer to the meaning I intended (Webster's Daily Use Dictionary, 1933).

    The Fountainhead Rand, Ayn 1943

  • The error is semantic: the use of the word "egotist" in Roark's courtroom speech, while actually the word should have been "egoist."

    The Fountainhead Rand, Ayn 1943

  • He has been described as an "egotist," but I challenge the description.

    Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 13 Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers Elbert Hubbard 1885

  • Those essays, as happens with epoch-marking books, were themselves a life, the power which [84] makes them what they are having been accumulated in them imperceptibly by a thousand repeated modifications, like character in a person: at the moment when Gaston presented himself, to go along with the great "egotist" for a season, that life had just begun.

    Gaston de Latour; an unfinished romance Walter Pater 1866

  • The woman she knows how to talk and she's so down to earth, I mean, when you find someone successful in his/her life you think that they are very "egotist" and all that, but that woman was so down to earth and she was treating the group in a very polite, open minded and educated way!

    Qwaider Planet 2009

  • His kind of egotist wouldn't, not on such a topic. "

    There Will Be Time Anderson, Poul, 1926-2001 1972

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Daffynition: someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.

    January 6, 2007