Make Your Point > Archived Issues > OZYMANDIAN
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pronounce
OZYMANDIAN:
Say it "OZ uh MAN dee yun."
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
Today, we're taking the name of a historical ruler and turning it into a long, fancy, proper adjective with an unsettling meaning.
Believe it or not, we've done that before! See if you can recall that other long, fancy, proper adjective: Something or someone M_________ian is tricky and dishonest for the purpose of gaining something. If the ends justify the means, no matter how brutal, that's M_________ian.
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
If you refer to someone as an Ozymandias, you mean that person acts like a big mighty king, or an enormously powerful dictator, like the original Ozymandias: an Egyptian pharaoh also known as Ramesses II.
This pharaoh is the subject of a famous poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley called "Ozymandias." The poem is really short: a sonnet. You can read it here, if you like.
In the poem, a traveler finds the shattered remains of an enormous statue of a king. And the inscription on the statue says, "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" But the spooky and ironic thing is that, all around this shattered statue, there's nothing: just empty desert sands. So the words were supposed to say, "Look at all this great stuff I did, and feel jealous!" But instead the words actually say, "Look at how everything I built in my life has crumbled away, and feel sad because the same thing will happen to you!"
That whole story about the self-important king, and that whole spooky, ironic comment about how our life's work crumbles away, gets encapsulated in the adjective "Ozymandian." To call something Ozymandian is to say that it's enormous, impressive, and self-important, but still temporary and doomed to decay just like everything else.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech: adjective, the proper kind that you always capitalize: "his Ozymandian ego," "her ambitions were Ozymandian."
Other forms: Ozymandias(es).
how to use it:
This word is outrageously showy, much like the people and things it describes--so pick it when your sentence needs some glitz, drama, and exaggeration.
Talk about someone's Ozymandian ego, pride, self-importance, or delusions of grandeur.
Or, talk about a place's Ozymandian statues, buildings, or other landmarks--or, more figuratively, its Ozymandian glory, grandeur, beauty, spectacle, excess, fall, collapse, death, decay, etc.
Or, simply refer to someone as an Ozymandias. Here's William Brandon: "Every conquering Ozymandias in all history rose and fell and was forgotten."
examples:
"Almost everybody... sneered in private at the Shah's Ozymandian megalomania, symbolized by a $100 million fete he staged at Persepolis in 1971 to celebrate the 2,500 years of the Persian Empire."
— Time, 7 January 1980
"Visiting the European Parliament in Strasbourg this week was one of those Ozymandian moments... It is true that the first reaction of many visitors to the European Parliament is not to despair, but rather to head off for a good lunch and then file an expenses claim. But... one cannot help wondering whether its grandiose buildings could yet suffer the fate of Ozymandias's statue."
— The Economist, 9 June 2005
In Season 3, Episode 17 of Futurama, "A Pharaoh to Remember," Bender lives out his Ozymandian fantasy, forcing his friends to build a statue of him viewable from space:
has this page helped you understand "Ozymandian"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "Ozymandian" without saying "extremely self-important" or "colossal but crumbling away."
try it out:
To describe things that are extremely expensive, power-grabbing, or otherwise outrageous--especially in business or government--we can say that they take place on an Ozymandian scale.
Check it out:
1. "[The nuclear power station would be a] monument to flawed beliefs...bottomless government naivety and incompetence on an Ozymandian scale."
— David Howell, Empires in Collision, 2016
2. "Certainly, the numbers just released by [the oil company] Aramco adhere to the usual Ozymandian scale. Free cash flow of $15 billion for the quarter is roughly the same as BP's for the past three years."
— Liam Denning, Bloomberg, 12 May 2020
With these examples in mind, talk about something else that happens on an Ozymandian scale. It might be within your government, within your company or industry, or within popular music, professional sports, or the cutthroat world of YouTube programming for kids. I'm looking at you, Ryan's Toy Review: your product-pushing is Ozymandian.
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
This month, our game is "Caption These!"
In each issue this month, caption the images below (A, B, and C) by matching them to the vocabulary words they illustrate (1, 2, and 3). Need a closer look? Give the images a click. And, if you can, explain the exact meaning of each word. I'll share the answers in the following issue. Good luck!
From the previous issue:
Answers:
A: echelon, B: salmagundi, C: scrum.
(To review a word, give it a click.)
Try these today:
1: clinquant
2: brown study
3: buttress
review this word:
1. A near opposite of OZYMANDIAN is
A. HUMBLE.
B. HAPLESS.
C. HUMILIATED.
2. Even though it would have been totally appropriate, the Ozymandian figure from Shelley's poem had no influence over the name _____, as in, _____
A. "The Wizard of Oz" .. "I am Oz, The Great and Powerful!"
B. "Ozzy" in Ozzy & Drix .. "The name's Jones. Osmosis Jones. I'm a cop."
C. "Ozzy Osbourne" .. "You don't need to hire a dog therapist; you just need to wake up at 7 am and open the [****]ing door!"
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
Today, we're taking the name of a historical ruler and turning it into a long, fancy, proper adjective with an unsettling meaning.
If you refer to someone as an Ozymandias, you mean that person acts like a big mighty king, or an enormously powerful dictator, like the original Ozymandias: an Egyptian pharaoh also known as Ramesses II.
Part of speech: adjective, the proper kind that you always capitalize: "his Ozymandian ego," "her ambitions were Ozymandian."
This word is outrageously showy, much like the people and things it describes--so pick it when your sentence needs some glitz, drama, and exaggeration.
"Almost everybody... sneered in private at the Shah's Ozymandian megalomania, symbolized by a $100 million fete he staged at Persepolis in 1971 to celebrate the 2,500 years of the Persian Empire."
Explain the meaning of "Ozymandian" without saying "extremely self-important" or "colossal but crumbling away."
To describe things that are extremely expensive, power-grabbing, or otherwise outrageous--especially in business or government--we can say that they take place on an Ozymandian scale.
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
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