Conceit

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /kənˈsiːt/

Definitions

1. An excessive pride in oneself or one's abilities, often manifested as vanity or self-importance
2. An inflated sense of self-worth that leads to arrogance or an exaggerated belief in one's own talents and qualities
3. An unduly high opinion of one's own value or abilities ; a clever or fanciful literary device expressing an imaginative comparison or idea

Etymology: The English noun "conceit" has a surprisingly tangled ancestry: it is a doublet of "concept", meaning the two words descend from the same Latin source but reached English by different routes. Latin "concipere" meant "to take in completely" or "to conceive", and it passed into Old French as "concevoir". English took that verb as "conceiven", and the noun "conceit" was then built on it, perhaps by analogy with pairs such as "deceive" and "deceit" or "receive" and "receipt". In its earliest sense, a conceit was simply an idea or a notion formed in the mind. The word's sense of pride came later. Its move from "thought" to "vanity" happened because a fanciful notion about oneself easily becomes an overly high opinion of oneself, and English speakers used it that way in the Middle Ages. The same root also gave us "concept", which kept the neutral sense of a mental idea, while "conceit" drifted toward self-regard.

Synonyms: pride, vanity, self-importance, arrogance, hubris

Antonyms: humility, modesty, selflessness, self-effacement, meekness