Timeline for answer to How common is the word "hubris" in spoken language? by Ash
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| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 4, 2018 at 15:07 | comment | added | Ash | @pipe By definition hubris is overbearing pride or arrogance so while neither has quite the vehemence of hubris than can be made to be substitutes. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 15:07 | comment | added | tautophile | FWIW, I would pronounce hubris as /hoo-briss/ or perhaps /hyu-briss/--but I don't think I've ever had occasion to pronounce it. The related word hybrid is pronounced "high-bridd"; it is much more common than hubris. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 15:02 | comment | added | pipe | Neither pride nor arrogance is a good substitute for hubris though (says I, a non-native speaker, but I am unusually brave today). | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 14:29 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Márton: Well, OP says that "original" spelling (hybris) can be used in Italian anyway. But you might be interested to note that the full OED first records that version in English in 1920, some decades after hubris. It never cauight on though. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 14:23 | comment | added | molnarm | @FumbleFingers the comparison with the original spelling is interesting too, especially the sudden decline after 1959 | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 13:59 | comment | added | Ash | @FumbleFingers Again that's a comparison of written language, this falls outside the parameters of this particular question. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 13:13 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Ash: If you compare the AmE / BrE corpuses on my NGram link you'll see that the steady increase in traction (and current level of usage) are about equal for both. Apart from a slight uptick in BrE around the mid-60s, perhaps occasioned by the fact that C. S. Lewis used it in Poems (1964). Sure - it's probably outside the productive vocabulary of the majority of native Anglophones - but that's just because most people aren't very articulate, and don't know many different words in total. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:49 | comment | added | Ash | @FumbleFingers Yes that's in England, and in writing where it is far more common than the spoken word. England is also far from being the only country the language is spoken, you do realise this yes? | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:45 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | ...and if you think the Mail isn't "lowbrow" enough for my point, I see there are 258 hits for hubris in The Daily Mirror. I won't descend to the depths of The Sun, but I've no doubt even they would be quite happy to use it today. It's no longer that rarefied. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:42 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Ash: Well, as I said, back when I was an English Language / Literature undergraduate, I only ever came across it in academia. I would point out that a site-specific search on The Daily Mail ~(hardly an "academic" source!) finds 881 instances... | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:29 | comment | added | Ash | @FumbleFingers I've heard hubris used as a spoken word half a dozen times in 30+ years and always when someone is reading it from a text from the first half of last century. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:23 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | @Oliver: The word didn't really exist in English before the OED's first cite (which refers to it as "Academic slang", while providing an "inline definition"), and the next cite isn't until 1923. My "evidence" for the ongoing / rising currency of the term in spoken English is based on a lifetime of using and hearing it - almost exclusively as an "academic" usage when I was a student half a decade ago, but it's well out there in more general use today. Definitely not "archaic", whether you believe that NGram supports my position or not. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:07 | history | edited | Oliver Mason | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:06 | comment | added | Oliver Mason | Google n-grams are based on published books, rather than informal spoken language, so they are not really reliable evidence in this case. | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:04 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | Per this NGram, the word hubris (first recorded use by OED, 1884) has been steadily gaining traction over the past century. It may have come from ancient Greek, but it's actually a relatively modern usage, not "an archaic term". | |
| Jul 4, 2018 at 12:00 | history | answered | Ash | CC BY-SA 4.0 |