SELF-IMPORTANCE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-importance mean? 

• SELF-IMPORTANCE (noun)
  The noun SELF-IMPORTANCE has 2 senses:

1. an inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others

2. an exaggerated opinion of your own importance

  Familiarity information: SELF-IMPORTANCE used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-IMPORTANCE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An inflated feeling of pride in your superiority to others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

ego; egotism; self-importance

Hypernyms ("self-importance" is a kind of...):

pride; pridefulness (a feeling of self-respect and personal worth)

Derivation:

self-important (having or showing feelings of unwarranted importance out of overbearing pride)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An exaggerated opinion of your own importance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

egotism; self-importance; swelled head

Hypernyms ("self-importance" is a kind of...):

conceit; conceitedness; vanity (the trait of being unduly vain and conceited; false pride)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "self-importance"):

superiority complex (an exaggerated estimate of your own value and importance)

Derivation:

self-important (having or showing feelings of unwarranted importance out of overbearing pride)

 Context examples 

There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his letter, which promises well.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

One of these, a short, burly, red-faced man, full of fuss and self-importance, came hurrying up to my uncle.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Elinor had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her self-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;—and she was therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her brother, by the entrance of Mr. Robert Ferrars.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

The insipidity, and yet the noise—the nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people!

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

She was not rendered formidable by silence; but whatever she said was spoken in so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance, and brought Mr. Wickham immediately to Elizabeth's mind; and from the observation of the day altogether, she believed Lady Catherine to be exactly what he represented.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Catherine de Bourgh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his right as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)