Etymology

delusion of adequacy

Today it means: The false belief that one is adequate; the belief that one is doing a competent job when one is actually incompetent. Full definition →

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The story

Coined by American writer and Broadway theater critic Walter Kerr in 1951 in a review in New York Herald Tribune review of a Broadway play called Buy Me Blue Ribbons (in reference to star Jay Robinson). An ironic variation of delusion of grandeur.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.