Did You Know?
"Aggrandize" has enhanced the English vocabulary since the early 17th century. English speakers adapted "agrandiss-," the stem of the French verb "agrandir," to form "aggrandize," and later used the French form "agrandissement" as the basis of the noun "aggrandizement." (The root of "agrandiss-" is Latin; it comes from "grandis," meaning "great.") Nowadays, both noun and verb are regularly paired (somewhat disparagingly) with the prefix "self-" to refer to individuals bent on glorifying themselves, as in the following sentence by Barbara Buchholz which appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1995: "Celebrity authors eager to reveal all, self-aggrandize and wear their royalties in expensive attire. . . ."
