delusion of adequacy
nounEtymology
Coined by American writer and Broadway theater critic Walter Kerr in 1951 in a review in New York Herald Tribune review of a Broadway play called Buy Me Blue Ribbons (in reference to star Jay Robinson). An ironic variation of delusion of grandeur.
Definitions
The false belief that one is adequate
The false belief that one is adequate; the belief that one is doing a competent job when one is actually incompetent.
- But compared to the jagged, snow-covered peaks in the distance, the mountains back east were mud hills with delusions of adequacy.
- Whatever delusion of adequacy my admission to my father's alma mater had encouraged evaporated like morning dew, and I was left to panic before the stark, unblinking truth: I was an interloper.
The neighborhood
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for delusion of adequacy. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA