The Language Lovers’ Club: Proud

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Clarissa

April 28, 2016

Another expression I find to be overused is “I’m proud of you.” It bugs me when people address it to complete strangers in lieu of “I admire you.” For instance, Dr. Phil often says “I’m proud of you” to guests on his show who share how they overcame adversity (without any help from him and many years ago.) Or Obama put these words in his response to a little girl from Flint who wrote him a letter. If the girl were his daughter, it would make every sense of him to say “I’m proud of you” because he could reasonably claim a degree of responsibility for her achievement. But it’s a girl he never met. What’s he to be proud of?

When we substitute “I admire you” with “I’m proud of you”, we adopt a somewhat condescending position that is better than “I approve of you” but falls far short of the more sincere “I admire you.” “I’m proud of you” also claims one person’s achievement as at least partly one’s own. I, for instance, feel happy to share the credit for my achievements with people who were there for me, supported me and contributed to my success. But I find it off-putting when strangers try to make my achievements about themselves by claiming to take pride in them.

If you managed to beat your way through the false warnings of malware on the site, let’s discuss pride vs admiration.

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5 responses to “The Language Lovers’ Club: Proud”

Pen

April 28, 2016

I’ve never thought of it this way. I do get bothered by the “I’m proud of you” sometimes, especially when it’s clearly not pride the person is trying to express. I just always thought it was because I’m insanely picky about the meaning and connotations of words. And now you have me thinking about why I get so picky. (I’m wondering if it’s partly because the majority of my vocabulary was learned contextually from books.)

Admiration has a more positive connotation than pride. You can’t admire yourself–you can only admire others. And when you admire others, you create a sort of framework for how you want to live your life, what kind of person you want to be. That can be a bad thing, especially when it comes to blind admiration. But overall it’s a positive thing, especially if someone has worked up the courage to say “I admire you,” aloud.

Pride, on the other hand, is often perceived as being directed toward the self. So “I’m proud of you,” can seem sort of bland or meaningless in comparison to “I admire you,” because admiration seems so much more personal. Like you said, it almost seems like the proud person is taking some of the credit for your actions, and at its worst it feels condescending.

On the other hand, if someone is sincerely proud of you, it becomes more like “It’s an honor to know you because this is the kind of person you are.” So then it’s more of a recognition of your own character. But then the pride is expressed more often as “I’m proud to know you,” or “I’m proud to be your friend.” When put that way, it reads to me similar to admiration.

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Ellie

April 28, 2016

Hmm, maybe it’s just me but ‘admire’ connotes sexual desire. ‘Admiring someone’ makes me think of a long, lustful gaze.

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Z

April 28, 2016

I hate proud of. It connotes you’ve done something you said you couldn’t, or that was beyond your capabilities, or something. That you needed that person’s encouragement and help to get to where you have gotten. When people say it I usually want to kick their teeth out or bash their head in, actually, because I find it to be very invasive and I am quite sensitive to invasion — and have this fight reaction, feel I need to defend my very life.

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1. Clarissa
  
  April 28, 2016
  
  That’s exactly how I feel! I’m glad I’m not alone on this one. It does seem like an attempt to involve me in some weird effort to make oneself feel superior.
  
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Vic Crain

April 29, 2016

One of the characteristics of English is that context can be very specific but individual words usually are not. You can admire a painting or admire a person, with admire taking a somewhat different meaning in each instance. A parent can be proud of a child, you can be proud to know someone or you can express school pride (be proud of the school or a team) and in each case you are expressing something a bit different. The use of both words has fallen, which may express (1) faddish use of language, or (2) changes in how people relate to each other, or both.

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