Egregious vs Impertinent - What's the difference?
egregious | impertinent |
Exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion.
* 16thC , ,
* c1605 , , Act 2, Scene 3,
* 22 March 2012 , Scott Tobias, AV Club The Hunger Games [http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-hunger-games,71293/]
* '>citation
Outrageously bad; shocking.
insolent, ill-mannered
* Tillotson
* Jeremy Taylor
irrelevant (opposite of pertinent)
An impertinent individual.
* (Maria Edgeworth)
As adjectives the difference between egregious and impertinent
is that egregious is exceptional, conspicuous, outstanding, most usually in a negative fashion while impertinent is insolent, ill-mannered.As a noun impertinent is
an impertinent individual.egregious
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- The student has made egregious errors on the examination.
- I cannot cross my arms, or sigh "Ah me," / "Ah me forlorn!" egregious foppery! / I cannot buss thy fill, play with thy hair, / Swearing by Jove, "Thou art most debonnaire!"
- My lord, you give me most egregious indignity.
- When the goal is simply to be as faithful as possible to the material—as if a movie were a marriage, and a rights contract the vow—the best result is a skillful abridgment, one that hits all the important marks without losing anything egregious .
Usage notes
The negative meaning arose in the late 16th century, probably originating in sarcasm. Before that, it meant outstanding in a good way. Webster also gives “distinguished” as an archaic form, and notes that its present form often has an unpleasant connotation (e.g., "an egregious error" ). It generally precedes such epithets as “rogue,” “rascal,” "ass," “blunderer”.impertinent
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- things that are impertinent to us
- How impertinent that grief was which served no end!
Usage notes
Although, historically, definition 2 was the original (derived from the French below) usage; meaning gradually changed to definition 1. More recently general usage has come to, once again, incorporate definition 2. As many older speakers will consider definition 2 incorrect, avoiding the word altogether may be advisable. The construction "not pertinent" is one possible alternative.Synonyms
* See alsoNoun
(en noun)- comfortably recessed from curious impertinents