Aggrandizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To increase one's power or wealth while exaggerating significance or importance through ostentation or self-promotion
2. To enhance the status or influence of oneself or something while inflating its importance through grandiose declarations or actions
3. To amplify the perception of power or importance beyond the true level through boastful or showy behavior

Etymology: Aggrandize began as a French-influenced coinage built from a word meaning "great." Its core is the Latin "grandis," "large" or "great," which passed into Old French as "grant" and then "grand," and English took the stem through French as well. The verb took its form from the French "agrandir," meaning "to make larger," which combined the "a-" prefix, marking a change into a state, with "grand." English then added its own "-ize" ending, a suffix that turns nouns and adjectives into verbs and that English had borrowed from Greek and Latin "-izein" and "-izare" forms. The "-ing" in "aggrandizing" is the ordinary ending that turns the verb into a participle, used here as a verb form. The sense has stayed close to its origin: to make something greater in size, power, or rank. Applied to a person, it describes making oneself appear more important than one really is, a shift from physical enlargement to social self-promotion.

Synonyms: inflating, exaggerating

Antonyms: diminishing