The word “arrogant” first came into English from French in Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale, although it must have been used in speech for some time.  “Arrogance” appears almost 100 years earlier than “arrogant”, so it’s plain the words were being used in discussion, even if we haven’t found written evidence of them before that.

The Parson’s Tale is the last of the Canterbury Tales and also the longest.  Although throughout the Canterbury Tales it is not unusual to hear its various commentators unleashing stinging criticism of the church, and even to get into some pretty spicy descriptions—The Parson’s Tale comes across with the Parson appearing as a pretty fair and sensible guy.  So it is this respectable fellow, in warning against the various different shades of sin, who explains the word for us as follows:

• Arrogant is he who thinks he has within himself those virtues which he has not,
• or who holds that he deserves to have them;
• or else he deems that he is that which he is not.

If you look in a dictionary these days definitions will run something along the lines of “aggressively conceited” or “presumptuous.”

Ultimately “arrogant” and “arrogance” come from Latin where their parent word held a similar sense, but was built on the Latin word for “claim.”  Related words have arisen which have meant “adoption”—which is claiming as your child, one who is not biologically your offspring.

So, people who are arrogant are claiming something of themselves that they are not.

Since I am so often recounting stories that date from the times of Shakespeare or King Alfred, I don’t usually have a sound bite of original material to go along with the word of the day.  Today however I have a little story that is barely a month old.

In the recent Canadian elections the old Liberal government were tossed out and a new Conservative government was brought in.  David Emerson, a senior politician from the old government was reelected but now was on the losing side.  Two weeks to the day, after the election he switched sides to become a cabinet minister in the new government.

This understandably pissed off the people who had voted for him because he was a liberal, as well as the people who had worked on his campaign and spent many thousands of dollars trying not to elect a conservative.

He told the media he was surprised that people were upset, and among other things said: [you'll have to listen to the audio file above]

There’s not much more to say on the subject, is there?