self-aggrandizing

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of self-aggrandizing Today's self-aggrandizing report is little more than an industry wishlist masked as government policy. Lucien Bruggeman, ABC News, 30 July 2025 Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem dipped a toe inside the city limits — a dozen miles away from the protests — to host a self-aggrandizing press conference in Westwood, only to have U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla elbow his way in and be thrown to the ground by overzealous FBI agents. Jim Newton, Mercury News, 12 July 2025 Arnett’s narration is conversational but authoritative, proud but not self-aggrandizing. Sarah Larson, New Yorker, 12 May 2025 While Musk’s often self-aggrandizing moves can be polarizing, Trump’s promotion of him as his proxy balances it out. Barnini Chakraborty, The Washington Examiner, 28 Mar. 2025 Admittedly, to anyone not in Chalamet’s camp at this moment, that speech might have seemed self-aggrandizing, a kind of boy-king entitlement. Stephanie Zacharek, TIME, 25 Feb. 2025 Heavy handed, self-aggrandizing hype and a near certain success in doing what any other major American politician would have been afraid to do. Ted Johnson, Deadline, 9 Feb. 2025 When senators read from their self-aggrandizing scripts, the resemblance to play actors is incontrovertible. Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 20 Jan. 2025 Corbet recalled shooting the scene where Van Buren leads a group of party guests outside to a hillside overlook that would become the location for his institute and delivers a long speech that is somehow both self-pitying and self-aggrandizing. Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 19 Dec. 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for self-aggrandizing
Adjective
  • Cena gets to show off his mane of hair while playing Peacemaker, the egotistical vigilante that made his debut in 2021's Suicide Squad and now leads the acclaimed HBO Max series also starring Danielle Brooks, Freddie Stroma, and Jennifer Holland.
    Mekishana Pierre, EW.com, 6 Aug. 2025
  • Such an obvious way to exhibit his egotistical personality.
    Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 22 June 2025
Adjective
  • But this act of arrogant bullying should also re-kindle the spirit of hope and unity that swept through this community in the aftermath of that horrible night in 2016, that still binds Orlando in its 150th anniversary year.
    Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board, The Orlando Sentinel, 21 Aug. 2025
  • Harry Potter fans might recognize Stroma for playing the arrogant Hogwarts student named Cormac McLaggen in the film franchise.
    Olivia Singh, Forbes.com, 20 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • The real real thing tended to be rather different: clumsy, ad hoc, vainglorious—and secret.
    Dan Piepenbring, Harpers Magazine, 16 July 2025
  • Here, too, in the Airfix models and the vainglorious LP collection is the solitary self-curation of the only child—the kid who can’t dash from his bedroom to a sibling’s, model or record in hand.
    James Wood, New Yorker, 14 July 2025
Adjective
  • Their music provided a suitably self-important soundtrack as Great Recession-era artisanal hipsterdom faded into the careerist hopefulness of the latter Obama years, when Everlane minimalism supplanted lumberjack plaid.
    Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 13 Aug. 2025
  • The effort was pointless and self-important and never once determined the Legislature could promote happiness by lowering the cost of living and staying out of people’s lives.
    Matt Fleming, Oc Register, 11 Aug. 2025
Adjective
  • People are becoming more self-centered, and as a result, excluding the other, otherness.
    Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 13 Aug. 2025
  • To Tess, her daughter is self-centered, ungrateful and way too loud.
    Kirk Honeycutt, HollywoodReporter, 12 July 2025
Adjective
  • This is the worst kind of football team: a conceited but objectively mediocre squad.
    Dieter Kurtenbach, The Mercury News, 17 Nov. 2024
  • Rory Kinnear steals some of the best lines as the conceited British prime minister, and Ato Essandoh, as Kate’s deputy chief, plays the ever-flustered man surrounded by extremely capable women with admirable humor, charm, and confidence.
    Ben Travers, IndieWire, 30 Oct. 2024
Adjective
  • Like the opera, the film blends these disparate moods and tones at a whirlwind tempo: slapstick comedy and poignant melodrama, graceful lyricism and bumptious braggadocio, witty satire and bitter tragedy.
    Richard Brody, New Yorker, 30 July 2025
  • This splendid, wry satire is about a wealthy family, self-important and confident in their morality, whose blithe and bumptious existences are thrown into disarray when their father clandestinely decides to give all their money to charity, and so (in their opinions) completely destroys their lives.
    Literary Hub July 1, Literary Hub, 1 July 2025
Adjective
  • That sweet spot between professionalism, entertainment and high-and-mighty disapproval?
    Phil Hay, New York Times, 19 June 2025
  • Lots of high-and-mighty people populate Tyrrell’s recollections.
    John Fund, National Review, 26 Nov. 2023

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Cite this Entry

“Self-aggrandizing.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/self-aggrandizing. Accessed 27 Aug. 2025.

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