aggrandize
/ə'grændaiz/
Definition
- Verb:
- To make something appear greater or more significant than it is, often by adding exaggerated details or false information: The core meaning involves enhancing the perception of something's size, importance, or power, typically through embellishment or inflation.
- To increase the power, status, or wealth of a person or nation: This meaning focuses on actual expansion or elevation, though it can imply using questionable means.
Usage Examples
- Verb:
- The biography tended to aggrandize the leader's wartime role, ignoring the contributions of others.
- He was accused of using public funds to aggrandize his personal estate.
- Historians warn against aggrandizing the empire's cultural achievements while overlooking its oppressive policies.
Advanced Usage
- "Self-aggrandizement" (noun): The act of increasing one's own power, status, or reputation, typically in a boastful or excessive manner.
- The politician's speech was an exercise in pure self-aggrandizement.
- Used often in formal, critical, or historical contexts to describe the inflation of facts, reputation, or territorial control.
Variants and Related Words
- Aggrandizement (noun): The act or result of aggrandizing.
- The pursuit of personal aggrandizement was his primary motivation.
- Aggrandizer (noun): A person who aggrandizes.
Synonyms
- Embellish: To make more attractive by adding decorative details, but often implies adding fictitious details.
- Exaggerate: To represent something as being larger, better, or worse than it really is.
- Magnify: To make something seem more important or serious than it is.
- Glorify: To describe or represent as admirable, especially unjustifiably.
Antonyms
- Belittle: To make someone or something seem less impressive or important.
- Diminish: To make or become less.
- Understate: To describe or represent something as being smaller or less important than it actually is.
Related Phrases and Idioms
- Aggrandize oneself: To promote or increase one's own status or importance.
- He constantly sought opportunities to aggrandize himself at meetings.
- Aggrandize at the expense of: To enhance one's own position by diminishing another's.
- The regime aggrandized itself at the expense of the neighboring states.
Verb
-
add details to
Khám phá thêm
Các từ liên quan
Từ gần giống
Từ chứa "aggrandize"
