‘nosism’: meaning and origin
in reference to a group of people: a self-centred attitude (corresponding to ‘egotism’ in an individual)—UK, 1819—from the Latin pronoun of the first person plural ‘nōs’ and the suffix ‘‑ism’ (after ‘egotism’)
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“the very pineapple of politeness” and other malapropisms
from the name of Mrs Malaprop, a character who confuses long words in The Rivals (1775), a comedy by the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan—character named after ‘malapropos’, from the French locution ‘mal à propos’, literally ‘ill to purpose’
Read More‘ultracrepidarian’, coined to denigrate a specific person
UK, 1819—specifically invented to qualify the English poet and critic William Gifford with reference to the fact that he had been a shoemaker’s apprentice—alludes to the proverb ‘let the cobbler stick to his last’ from Pliny’s Natural History (AD 77)
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