conceited
part of speech
adjective (conceited, more conceited, most conceited)
meaning for a pupil
Too proud of yourself; thinking you are cleverer, better-looking or more important than you are. tree →
sense in the lessons
In stories, a conceited character often boasts and then gets a lesson. Toad in The Wind in the Willows is very conceited: he sings songs about how wonderful he is («The world has held great Heroes… but never a name to go down to fame compared with that of Toad!»). Kipling's Just So animals can be conceited too. The noun is conceit. Opposite: modest, humble.
examples
- Toad was so conceited that he wrote songs about himself. tree →
- She is clever but not at all conceited. tree →
- Don't be conceited just because you won. tree →
- The conceited peacock spread his tail for everyone to admire. tree →
- Badger told Toad to stop being so conceited. tree →
- It sounded conceited when he said he was the best player in the school. tree →
- Nobody likes a conceited winner. tree →
- "How conceited you are!" exclaimed the beetle. tree →
note
The noun is conceit (also an old word for a clever idea in a poem). Similar words: vain, big-headed, arrogant, stuck-up (informal). Spelling: ei after c — conceited.
In the corpora
- He's kind and good-natured — though perhaps not very clever, and rather boastful and conceited.
- Perhaps he's not very clever ... and it may be that he is both boastful and conceited.»
- Conceited = thinks too much of himself; boastful = always showing off about what he has or does.
- The book calls it «perhaps the most conceited song that any animal ever composed».
- «There was a great deal more of the same sort, but too dreadfully conceited to be written down.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «conceited» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.