Make Your Point > Archived Issues > AMOUR PROPRE
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pronounce
AMOUR PROPRE:
Say it "uh more PRO pruh."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
Some of you guys have asked me, "How you pick words to write about? Can I suggest some?" To the second question: Absolutely, please do! If you have ideas for words to feature, I'd love to hear them!
Most of the time, the way I find words to share with you is by scrolling carefully through the pages of the online Oxford English Dictionary. It's way more fun than it sounds. Really. Other times, I find words to share as I'm reading books or articles, in fun little moments of surprise where I see a new word and feel my ears perk up. I pounce on it.
And on rare occasions, I find them while poking around in the thesaurus, in equally fun little moments.
Say you open the thesaurus to look up the word pride. You consider synonyms like ego, dignity, h_br_s, and self-satisfaction. You twitch in irritation at pridefulness. But you perk up at, and pounce on, amour propre. "What's this, now? Hey, hey, hey! I'm about to learn something new."
Amour propre: self-love. Vanity. Pride in yourself. A high opinion of yourself. Especially the kind that's easily bruised: "His amour propre was so wounded that he ranted for twelve tweets straight."
Inside this term, it's pretty easy to see how the amour part comes from Latin amor, meaning "love," just like our words am___ ("peaceful friendliness, usually between countries") and am__able ("friendly, with no hatred and no fighting"). (Did you just guess amiable? That's super close, and also related to amor! But amiable is more like "friendly, with a warm attitude;" it often describes people, while am__able more often describes events.)
So the amour in amour propre makes plenty of sense. But unless you speak French (and I don't), it's a little harder to see why the propre part means "self." But we can make sense of it by noticing that propre traces back to the Latin privus, meaning "one's own," and so it's cousins with words like proper, property, private, and appropriate.
Now that we've anchored some familiar words to the term amour propre, let's explore it!
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
We took this term from French, and we've been using it in English since about 1775.
It literally means "love of the self."
In other words, someone's amour propre is an extreme sense of pride or love for themselves, especially the kind that makes them easily offended whenever they feel someone is questioning how great they are.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech: It's a noun, the uncountable kind: "her amour propre was offended," "his amour propre is legendary."
Other forms: Sometimes you'll see it with a hyphen: amour-propre.
how to use it:
Pick this fancy foreign term when you need an extra-snooty tone, whether you're being serious or silly. Let's keep it in italics for now, unless it becomes more common.
Talk about someone's amour propre, especially about someone whose amour propre has been dented, slighted, wounded, offended, insulted, or stepped on. "Feeling as though their amour propre had been insulted, they left early." "She's still nursing her wounded amour propre."
Or, talk about something that stirs, strokes, excites, or plays on someone's amour propre: "The cheering thousands at the rally excite his amour propre."
examples:
"Balotelli... the acme of the modern day Haircut Player. Here is a striker with all the moves, the attitude, the style, but very little right now to counterbalance such flouncing amour-propre."
— Barney Ronay, The Guardian, 22 October 2014
"They are both scrupulously courteous until their amour propre is stepped on, and then you realize that they are both medieval."
— Nell Speed, Molly Brown's Post-Graduate Days, 1914
has this page helped you understand "amour propre"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "amour propre" without saying "inflated self-confidence" or "a state of being in love with yourself."
try it out:
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau drew an interesting distinction between two kinds of self-love: amour propre and what he called amour de soi.
Both terms translate from French as "self-love." Both are ways to love yourself, Rousseau said.
Amour propre is the bad kind, according to Rousseau: the unhealthy kind, the kind that depends on what other people think of you. If I just want people to admire me, I'm running on amour propre.
And amour de soi is the good kind, the healthy kind, the kind that comes from within. If I love myself just because, regardless of what people say about me, I'm running on amour de soi.
At the New York Times, Arthur C. Brooks offers some ways to build up your amour de soi and trim away your amour propre. Here's one: "Go on a social media fast. Post to communicate, praise and learn — never to self-promote." (Sounds like a diet, not a fast, but you get the idea.)
Talk about some other ways to do this. How else can you cultivate your amour de soi? And how else can you weed out your amour propre?
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
This month, our game is called "Recollections."
In each issue, I'll share a quote from some work--it might be a song, a poem, or a book--and you'll come up with that work's title. You can assemble the title, highlighted in the vertical blue line below, by recalling words to fit into the puzzle. Scrap paper might help!
From the previous issue:
"We must understand the difference between the myths of pseudoscience, New Age thinking, and fundamentalist zealotry and the testable hypotheses of science."
Those words appear in the luminous book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan.
If you'd like to review any of the words from the puzzle, give them a click: cadent, palaver, umbrage, valor, wane, hairsplitting, aboveboard, quantifiable, nascent, dearth, barrage, eddy, warpath, oblivious, vanguard, facile, backpedal.
Try this last one today:
"He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake."
In what work does the quote above appear? (For a bigger view, click on the puzzle.)
1) adjective: "very smart in a sharp, practical way"
2) noun: "a range of different talents or techniques, as if each were a color to paint with"
3) adjective: "using very few words, in a mysterious or almost-rude way"
4) verb: "to make something less intense, or to just make it seem that way"
5) verb: "to force something down by tapping it again and again"
6) noun and verb: "wandering around, having a good time, probably irresponsibly, like Ferris Bueller on a day off, but oddly, more like Goofus than Gallant"
7) noun: "anything that protects you or brings you good luck, like a magical object"
8) adjective: "careful and shrewd, as if guarding secrets"
9) noun: "a crushing defeat, like Napoleon's in 1815"
10) adjective: "big-hearted, with a generous spirit that's willing to forgive"
11) adjective: "following orders in a way that's slave-like, servant-like, or too eager"
12) noun: "anything that seems so large, so impressive, and so solid and permanent that it reminds you of a grand building"
13) adjective: "easy to notice because it stands out or seems to leap upward from other things"
14) noun: "a basic starting point or a specific basic value that you use to make comparisons"
15) adjective: "full of tense disagreements between groups"
16) noun: "the important, central idea within something, as if it were setting the tone for the whole musical 'scale' of it"
17) noun: "a word or phrase that you say either to rally support for your cause or to express your most important idea"
18) noun: "the act of making fun of someone or something in a friendly way"
19) noun: "a total, sudden failure, as if in a sudden rush of ice or water in a river"
20) verb: "to tremble in a fearful way"
21) noun: "a loud or strong outburst of anything, especially wind, and especially about how the Capitol is cruel and oppressive and how we should all just meet up with Katniss and her family in the woods and run away from District 12 forever"
22) verb: "to chat casually, to have a conversation"
23) adjective: "famous and respected, or glorious, as if shinyyyyyy, like a treasure from a sunken pirate wreck, scrub the deck and make it look SHInyyyyyy, I will sparkle like a wealthy woman's neck"
24) verb: "to choose to avoid, even though indulging in it would bring you pleasure"
25) noun: "a complicated misunderstanding--though it may sound like it, not a kind of pasta"
review this word:
1. A near opposite of AMOUR PROPRE is
A. SHAME.
B. NERVES.
C. HESITATION.
2. The camera turns to Gaston in front of a _____, saying "_____" and dripping with amour propre.
A. window .. Do I dare?
B. mirror .. No one deserves you
C. bakery .. Perhaps I shouldn't indulge
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Some of you guys have asked me, "How you pick words to write about? Can I suggest some?" To the second question: Absolutely, please do! If you have ideas for words to feature, I'd love to hear them!
We took this term from French, and we've been using it in English since about 1775.
Part of speech: It's a noun, the uncountable kind: "her amour propre was offended," "his amour propre is legendary."
Pick this fancy foreign term when you need an extra-snooty tone, whether you're being serious or silly. Let's keep it in italics for now, unless it becomes more common.
"Balotelli... the acme of the modern day Haircut Player. Here is a striker with all the moves, the attitude, the style, but very little right now to counterbalance such flouncing amour-propre."
Explain the meaning of "amour propre" without saying "inflated self-confidence" or "a state of being in love with yourself."
The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau drew an interesting distinction between two kinds of self-love: amour propre and what he called amour de soi.
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
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