megalomania Nosology.
(mɛgələʊˈmeɪnɪə)
[f. megalo- + mania.]
The insanity of self-exaltation; the passion for ‘big things’. Often transf.
| 1890 in Syd. Soc. Lex. 1892 Contemp. Rev. Feb. 166 Here again megalomania—the desire to ‘do the great’—had the upper hand. 1895 Spectator 2 Mar. 291 The patient exhibits erotomania or megalomania, or a maudlin..liability to emotion. 1897 Marquis of Salisbury in Daily Chron. 17 Nov. 8/2 A common intellectual complaint..which I may name (as I see Mr. Gladstone has consecrated the word) megalomania—the passion for big things simply because they are big. 1904 A. Griffiths Fifty Years Public Service xiv. 222 Megalomania was strangely prevalent among these criminal lunatics. |
Hence megaloˈmaniac a. and n.; megalomaˈniacal a.
| 1890 Syd. Soc. Lex. s.v. Megalomania, Many megalomaniacs are illegitimate children. 1892 Contemp. Rev. Feb. 167 A sort of megalomaniacal aberration. 1899 Pall Mall Gaz. 14 Feb. 2/3 A megalomaniac world is always apt to regard a waistcoat-pocket community as a joke. 1899 Speaker 29 July 105/1 He [Signor Crispi] was neither himself a megalomaniac nor the framer of the Triple Alliance. 1929 W. J. Locke Ancestor Jorico 29 They had to attribute the great fortune to the megalomaniac dreams of a dying man. 1974 J. Pope Hennessy R. L. Stevenson xii. 226 A project emanating from Fanny's now megalomaniac brain. |