Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun Vainglorious spirit as shown in opinion, action, or speech; ostentation; bombast, especially in the display of patriotism or national vanity.
Etymologies
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Examples
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He is a slow starter, but there is no stronger finisher because he has by temperament and training the faculty of getting through any job that he gives his mind to with a minimum expenditure of vital energy; nothing is wasted in expression, style, spread-eagleism; everything is instinctively kept as near to the practical heart of the matter as possible.
New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 April-September, 1915 Various
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A sort of "chip on the shoulder" spread-eagleism formerly made a class of Americans unpopular; now Americans are in favor in England, and are treated most cordially.
Manners and Social Usages Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
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That he preferred his own country to any other and that he believed that it was its greatest destiny to teach its institutions to the rest of the world, Page's letters show; yet this was with him no cheap spread-eagleism; it was a definite philosophy which the Ambassador had completely thought out.
The Life and Letters of Walter H Page Hendrick, Burton J 1922
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It is not the spread-eagleism with which some friends of ours are familiar.
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Blind patriotism was impossible for this great American: he exposed the shallowness of popular enthusiasms and the narrowness of rampant spread-eagleism, without regard for consequence to himself or his popularity.
Mark Twain Archibald Henderson 1920
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There is too much of vainglorious boasting in the poem (for America should be modest, and can afford to be modest), but it has enough of prophetic vision and exalted imagination to make us overlook its unworthy spread-eagleism.
Outlines of English and American Literature : an Introduction to the Chief Writers of England and America, to the Books They Wrote, and to the Times in Which They Lived William Joseph Long 1909
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There is much to be said for this contention, and there are some points in which the German Parliament also struck me as an improvement upon our Lower House: they do less than we in committee, and more in the main assemblage; German members are more attentive to the work in hand, and spread-eagleism and speeches to the galleries which are tolerated at Washington are not tolerated at Berlin.
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The new consciousness of empire uttered itself hastily, crudely, ran into buncombe, "spread-eagleism," and other noisy forms of patriotic exultation; but it was thoroughly democratic and
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The new consciousness of empire uttered itself hastily, crudely, ran into buncombe, "spread-eagleism," and other noisy forms of patriotic exultation; but it was thoroughly democratic and
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He complimented the president, judging "The absence of fine writing and spread-eagleism is a good sign."
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