Proudest

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A condition of experiencing significant satisfaction from one's successes
2. An attitude of self-respect and dignity that reaches its peak in relation to personal achievements
3. Feeling the highest degree of joy or satisfaction due to one's accomplishments ; expressing the strongest sense of personal worth or honor

Etymology: "Proudest" is the superlative of "proud", and the adjective has a more tangled past than its modern sense of self-regard suggests. Old English "prūd" meant "proud, arrogant, haughty", but its Old Norse cousin "prúðr" meant something closer to "gallant, brave, magnificent, stately", and the same admiring sense survives in the older French "prod" and "prut", meaning "brave, gallant". The English word thus began with a range of meanings that included both arrogance and splendour, and the vanity we now hear first is only one strand of that range. Scholars disagree about where the word came from. It may have been borrowed from Old French, which in turn may have drawn on a Late Latin word "prōde" meaning "useful", itself linked to Latin "prōdesse", "to be of value". Yet English already had related forms such as "prȳte" and "prȳtung", which hints that the word may be older and native to English. The honest picture is that its ancestry is uncertain, and its earliest senses sat close to bravery and worth.