Season 2 Flashcards
The ego
Egoist and egotist are built on the same Latin root—the pronoun ego, meaning I. I is the greatest concern in the egoist’s mind, the most overused word in the egotist’s vocabulary.
Ego itself has been taken over from Latin as an important English word and is commonly used to denote one’s concept of oneself, as in, “What do you think your constant criticisms do to my ego?” Ego has also a special meaning in psychology—but for the moment you have enough problems without going into that.
If you are Egocentric
you consider yourself the center of the universe —you are an extreme form of the egoist.
If you are egomaniac
you carry egoism to such an extreme that your needs, desires, and interests have become a morbid obsession, a mania.
Egoist or egotist vs egocentric vs egomaniac
The egoist or egotist is obnoxious, the egocentric is intolerable,
and the egomaniac is dangerous and slightly mad.
Others is the same as
others In Latin, the word for other is alter, and a number of valuable English words are built on this root.
Altruism altruists altruistic
Altruism the philosophy practiced by altruists, comes from one of the variant spellings of Latin alter, other. Altruistic actions look toward the beneϧt of others.
If you alternate_ alternative
If you alternate you skip one and take the other, so to speak, as when you play golf on alternate Saturdays.
An alternate in a debate, contest, or convention is the other person who will take over if the original choice is unable to attend. And if you have no alternative you have no other choice.
An alteration is
An alteration is of course a change—a making into something other.
When you alter your plans, you make other plans.
And keeping in mind that alter means other, you can quickly understand words like alter ego, altercation, and alteration.
An altercation
An altercation ) is a verbal dispute. When you have an altercation with someone, you have a violent disagreement, a “ϧght” with words. And why? Because you have other ideas, plans, or opinions than those of the person on the other side of the argument.
Altercation, by the way, is stronger than quarrel or dispute—the sentiment is more heated, the disagreement is likely to be angry or even hot-tempered, there may be recourse, if the disputants are human, to profanity or obscenity. You have altercations, in short, over pretty important issues, and the word implies that you get quite excited.
Alter ego is
Alter ego which combines alter, other, with ego, I, self, generally refers to someone with whom you are so close that you both do the same things, think alike, react similarly, and are, in temperament, almost mirror images of each other. Any such friend is your other I, your other self, your alter ego.
a. one who is excessively fixated on his own desires, needs, etc.
Egocentric
b. to change
To alter
c. argument
Altercation
d. one’s concept of oneself
Ego
e. to take one, skip one, etc.
To alternate
