Something we should all be doing to our novels --

Word of the Day for Friday, November 16, 2007

aggrandize \uh-GRAN-dyz; AG-ruhn-dyz\, transitive verb:

1. To make great or greater; to enlarge; to increase.
2. To make great or greater in power, rank, reputation, or wealth; -- applied to persons, countries, etc.
3. To make appear great or greater; to exalt.

All over the country, trial lawyers and activist judges are locked into an embrace cemented by their mutual contempt for democratic self-government and their desire to aggrandize their own power at its expense.
-- Rich Lowry, "The Gore Hard Core", National Review, November 20, 2000

It looks to me instead that one rising power center . . . is seeking to aggrandize itself by discrediting the principal alternative.
-- David Frum, "Diary", National Review, April 30, 2003

I think that using your public-sector contacts to aggrandize yourself when you leave . . . creates a view that the public sector is for sale.
-- Marcy Kaptur, quoted in "Connections and Then Some," by Greg Schneider, Washington Post, March 16, 2003

These small worlds periodically featured pageants or fetes to aggrandize local despots as they celebrated such occasions as empire-building marriages or the birth of an heir.
-- Robert Greskovic, Ballet 101

Aggrandize comes from French agrandir, from Old French, from a-, "to" (from Latin ad-) + grandir, "to grow larger," from Latin grandire, from grandis, "large."