self-aggrandizement

plural self-aggrandizements

1. countableuncountableBehaviour which increases one's own wealth or power, or which is intended to create an appearance of importance.

   Belarus was always going to be the most willing partner in Russia’s attempts at self-aggrandizement.

   2014 July 1, Frank Jacobs, “Welcome to Stanistan”, in Foreign Policy, archived from the original on 03 Aug 2023

   4 more examples

   [W]hat can selfish greed, what can self-aggrandizement and the most pitiless ambition effect against men who own to such discipline as this?

   1906, Anna Katharine Green, chapter 29, in The Chief Legatee

   In your case, I fear, confession is exploitation by indirection, profit-making by ruse, self-aggrandizement at the expense of God.

   1907 September, Jack London, “A Day’s Lodging”, in Love of Life and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., published December 1907, →OCLC, page 64

   As readers, we sense when the game is being played for real and when something else is afoot: pride, showmanship, the pursuit of power, self-aggrandizement, revenge, making money.

   2001 February 25, Stacey D’Erasmo, “Here comes the neighborhood [review of Everyday People (2001) by Stewart O’Nan]”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Apr 2022

   [quoting Anne Lamott]: Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one's specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the list of all the things one doesn't do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn't do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on.

   2016, Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy, pages 69-70