self-flattering

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-flattering Not waste time on glib and self-flattering diversions. Mark Z. Barabak, The Mercury News, 18 Mar. 2025 Convert a self-flattering remark into a mixture of both humility-based and complaint-based. Lance Eliot, Forbes, 5 Dec. 2024 The notion that history is a story of progress is another self-flattering illusion. Helena Rosenblatt, Foreign Affairs, 20 Feb. 2024
Recent Examples of Synonyms for self-flattering
Adjective
  • In the 1998 episode, Theroux, 53, appears briefly as an egotistical writer who flirts with Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw at a party.
    John Russell, People.com, 26 Mar. 2025
  • Yes: Crumb’s work is egotistical, misogynist, racist—or, more generously, a feculent parody.
    Dan Piepenbring, Harper's Magazine, 3 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Tim—sinking into drug abuse and narcissistic despair, as mournful as a donkey in a spa robe—has hovered over The White Lotus like a heavy black cloud.
    Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2025
  • Everybody else has no choice, really, other than to bring a cruel, narcissistic far-right leader to power.
    Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker, 10 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • Getting major names like Scorsese to act as the most egocentric, exaggerated versions of themselves was no easy task.
    Emily Blackwood, People.com, 26 Mar. 2025
  • With some of the smartest writing on television, Community told the story of a group of students at Greendale, led by the egocentric Jeff Winger (Joel McHale).
    Brian Tallerico, Vulture, 18 Mar. 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
  • But my in-laws seemed not to catch this smug look of his, and when my mother-in-law excused herself to go to the bathroom, my father-in-law took the opportunity to go over to his desk and take out one of his special blue envelopes.
    Hazlitt, Hazlitt, 2 Apr. 2025
  • But those smug computers obviously haven’t seen a shirtless Illini coach Brad Underwood and his Super Soaker squirt gun.
    Paul Sullivan, Chicago Tribune, 18 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • But, at a time when the legislative branch has been shamefully supine and the public has been alarmingly complacent, the federal courts represent the last best hope—at least, until the midterm elections—of combatting Trump’s outrages against the Constitution.
    Ruth Marcus, New Yorker, 21 Apr. 2025
  • Alligators are quite common in Florida, but Spencer urges others not to get complacent.
    Rachel Raposas, People.com, 6 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • Ivy-as-Marilyn is an inconsiderate, amphetamine guzzling faux-intellectual whose devotion to the acting craft is presented as a vainglorious affectation.
    Greg Evans, Deadline, 10 Apr. 2025
  • The name is meant to evoke Theodore Roosevelt’s vainglorious 1898 cavalry charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.
    Robert F. Worth, The Atlantic, 8 Apr. 2025
Adjective
  • The book is confident, thorough, uninhibited, and often weird.
    Moira Donegan, New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2025
  • Dutchman is uninhibited, forceful in its criticisms and condemnations of Black people who refuse to acknowledge the acute pain of racial violence in America.
    Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 8 Mar. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Self-flattering.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/self-flattering. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025.

Last Updated: - Updated example sentences
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