A Word That Became a Point of Pride
In Word Through The Times, we trace how one word or phrase has changed throughout the history of the newspaper. In a 1940 review of the film “Pride and Prejudice,” the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, “Laurence Olivier is Darcy, that’s all there is to it — the arrogant, sardonic Darcy whose pride went before a most felicitous fall.” Basically: Mr.
Darcy thought quite highly of himself. The word “pride” originally had a negative connotation, in which a person exhibiting pride had an “unduly high opinion of oneself,” according to the Webster’s New World College Dictionary. (Pride is also the first of the seven deadly sins.) Despite its connection with arrogance, the word is now often used to express that someone has a reasonable level of confidence, per the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
One can feel pride in a personal accomplishment, another person or a city or country. For example, in 1863, a Times article called Central Park “the pride of New-York.” During the civil rights and gay rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s, “pride” experienced a significant transformation.
On June 29, 1969, The Times wrote about a police raid the previous day at a gay bar in the West Village; the article, headlined “4 Policemen Hurt in ‘Village’ Raid,” was less than one column long.
