bovarysm means an imagined or unrealistic conception of oneself.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bovarysm ranks #2,226 of 14,297 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #2,328 of 14,438 for Most Storied Words, #2,374 of 14,451 for Most Whimsical Words, #2,574 of 14,448 for Funniest Words.
Why “bovarysm” is a great word
A pathological capacity for self-delusion through an idealized, romantic identity, forged to flee the banality of one's true existence. From the character Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel 'Madame Bovary' and the suffix -ism, denoting a distinctive practice or philosophy. Unlike self-deception, which implies a passive misreading of facts, or escapism, which suggests a simple flight from reality, bovarysm is an active, imaginative faculty for self-recreation. It is the provincial doctor's wife who sees herself as a Parisian salonnière, the tired commuter who rehearses a nobler biography in the mirror each morning, and the solitary reader who tastes perfume in poetry and feels lace at the wrist—the soul's persistent, almost architectural project of building a habitable self from the unsatisfactory materials at hand, a fiction in which one can never truly starve.
Etymology
Named after the character of Emma Bovary in Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary + -ism.
noun
- An imagined or unrealistic conception of oneself.
- An anxiety to escape from a social or sentimental condition judged to be unsatisfactory, sometimes by building a fictitious personality.
Words closest in meaning
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