The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-importance \Self`-im*por"tance\, n. An exaggerated estimate of one's own importance or merit, esp. as manifested by the conduct or manners; self-conceit.
Wiktionary
n. An exaggerated estimate of one's own importance or merit, especially as manifested by the conduct or manners; self-conceit.
WordNet
n. an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others [syn: ego, egotism]
an exaggerated opinion of your own importance [syn: egotism, swelled head]
Usage examples of "self-importance".
There was something about that unwinking stare, backlit and magnified to his own size, that swept away his smug aura of self-importance.
A potbellied Congolese policeman with blue-black skin, a presidential air of self-importance, and a wen under his left eye sat in the anteroom behind a flyspecked desk, reading a French-language newspaper whose headline proclaimed afrry disaster on the Kilombo River, the same muddy watercourse that flowed past Mogado.
The Alps and the glaciers together are able to take every bit of conceit out of a man and reduce his self-importance to zero if he will only remain within the influence of their sublime presence long enough to give it a fair and reasonable chance to do its work.
He can evaluate the impact of our writers in translation and he can point out the demerits of our perhaps overinflated self-importance in this field.
Usually a new Thoughtworld boss blasted in with banners waving, puffed out with assumed self-importance.
I remember the Surete and the Gestapo men as extremely clean, eating huge Arab meals in nameless backrooms in the souk of Algiers, their voices melodic with confidence, softened by self-importance.
These experienced governmental clericals would, like his experienced governmental security, fling their knowledge between the paidhi and the dedicated number-counters who sometimes sent letters specifically designed to entrap the paidhi into numerically infelicitous statements, which they, in the perverse self-importance of such experts, could then term significant.
Narcissism and paranoia are flip sides of the same distorted sense of self-importance.
She mocked their clumsy fumblings, their corny dialogue, their absurd self-importance.
It was used exclusively within Britain itself, never had to fight, never went hungry, never slept in an open field beneath a cloudburst, yet it paraded with a glorious pomp and self-importance.
We do not know how many other winning hands there are in the cosmic deck, how many other kinds of universes, laws of Nature, and physical constants: that could also lead to life and Intelligence and perhaps even delusions of self-importance.
The British Olympic team for the Male Self-Importance event had invaded Lothian & Borders HQ, a rampant infestation of facial hair and Y chromosomes.