How to Use aggrandize in a Sentence

aggrandize

verb
  • These lines read like lyrics by a self-aggrandizing old man who deals in generalities.
    — Josephine Livingstone, New Republic, 14 Sep. 2017
  • The press, by its own self-aggrandizing account, is enjoying some new golden age.
    — Jonah Goldberg, Alaska Dispatch News, 24 June 2017
  • But the movie is slightly ahead of the curve in branding Assange as a self-aggrandizing hustler.
    — Noel Murray, The Verge, 11 May 2018
  • Part of him wants to aggrandize the country to reflect his own inflated self-conception.
    — Michelle Goldberg, Mercury News, 23 Oct. 2025
  • Its character is aggrandized posh.
    — Christopher Robbins, Curbed, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Yeon-sik Hong’s view of his younger self is unsparing and complex, neither self-loathing nor aggrandizing.
    — Isaac Butler, Slate Magazine, 14 Aug. 2017
  • Soon Parveen discovers that Crane’s book is a self-aggrandizing fabric of lies.
    — Katherine A. Powers, Washington Post, 19 Nov. 2019
  • Far from the boastful, self-aggrandizing videos of the past, the group is now urging fighters to resist and not run away from the battlefield.
    — Washington Post, 10 June 2017
  • And as memoir films go, Lady Bird is very low on the list of self-aggrandizing narratives.
    — Richard Lawson, HWD, 2 Sep. 2017
  • Somehow, all that self-aggrandizing nonsense has at least some Americans convinced.
    — Jack Holmes, Esquire, 10 Aug. 2017
  • And there have been numerous biographies published since his death in 2018, some aggrandizing, some clear-eyed.
    — Borys Kit, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Dec. 2023
  • Reprinting the self-aggrandizing selfies a killer has posted to social media prior to an attack, for example, is not helpful.
    — Corinne Purtill, Quartz, 4 June 2019
  • There’s Eastern European folk music, soft shoe numbers, self-aggrandizing hip-hop, guitar rock and more.
    — Dominic P. Papatola, Twin Cities, 15 Sep. 2019
  • Naysayers often charge that critics and sommeliers explore the wine fringes in an arrogant, self-aggrandizing desire to show off something new and different.
    — Eric Asimov, New York Times, 28 Sep. 2017
  • America’s public discourse seems to consist of a never-ending series of brief monologues, typed out on social media and intended to wound others and aggrandize the self.
    — Jory Fleming, WSJ, 17 June 2021
  • Back in the go-go 1980s, the airline business was like catnip to any self-respecting (or self-aggrandizing) entrepreneur.
    — Barbara Peterson, CNT, 29 Aug. 2017
  • There are no terra-cotta warriors, no self-aggrandizing monuments, no Ozymandian announcements of greatness to the world there.
    — Charles E. F. Millard, National Review, 15 Feb. 2018
  • Vrabel has modernized, professionalized and aggrandized the Patriots in a matter of months.
    — Andrew Callahan, Boston Herald, 27 Nov. 2025
  • The more self-aggrandizing inmates, the ones who imagined themselves as the inspiration for a big-budget thriller, saw talking to Cox as an opportunity to get their story out there.
    — Rachel Monroe, The Atlantic, 16 July 2019
  • The project of applying modern standards to our forebears to aggrandize ourselves has also taken aim at some of the giants of Western political history.
    — Daniel Foster, National Review, 30 Nov. 2023
  • While some were obvious fabrications, meant to aggrandize the narrator by his association with Tsietsi, most seemed true.
    — Literary Hub, 16 June 2026
  • Theranos' second-in-command was Sunny Balwani, her combative and self-aggrandizing boyfriend.
    — Kevin Nguyen, GQ, 21 May 2018
  • The new president declares his inauguration day a special, self-aggrandizing day and goes on to sign an unprecedented number of executive orders in his first two weeks in office.
    — Steve Bachar, The Denver Post, 23 Feb. 2017
  • Unfortunately, this is in an environment of strident self-aggrandizing self-righteousness.
    — Letters To The Editor, The Mercury News, 7 Aug. 2019
  • This self-aggrandizing, reality-denying flavor of egotism has defined Trump for decades, through his roller-coaster business career and into political life.
    — Benjamin Hart, Daily Intelligencer, 28 Apr. 2018
  • The detective blames Nichols, the self-aggrandizing adviser who convinced the Cabazons to build a casino, for conjuring the intrigue that continued to befog the case long after his death.
    — Andrew Rice, WIRED, 4 Feb. 2011
  • In the article, the 29-year-old central midfielder explains that the story was simply massively aggrandized by Spanish media outlets.
    — SI.com, 19 Dec. 2017
  • The weakest episode of the new season presents flashbacks to Philip’s teenage years and the death of his sister, which humanize him, but don’t quite jibe with the cocky, self-aggrandizing provocateur Smith plays Philip as.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 9 Dec. 2017
  • Trump, the self-aggrandizer-in-chief, reportedly had concluded Bannon was too self-aggrandizing, disruptive and worse of all, the source of White House leaks.
    — Jeff Darcy, cleveland.com, 22 Aug. 2017
  • But the issue is that Paul, a former high-school teacher, is infinitely nastier and more superior, despite his self-aggrandizing resentment toward his brother.
    — Sophie Gilbert, The Atlantic, 5 May 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'aggrandize.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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