👉 Okay, let’s tackle that rather delightfully prickly little word – "
credi-…-tive.
". (Okay, I just said that out loud. It already tripped me up a bit, frankly. Let's unpack this beast of a coinage.)
Basically, you probably won't hear this anywhere except maybe in the fevered footnotes of some very specific academic circles. Here’s what we actually mean when someone throws around the word "credi-…tive."
1. What it
Should
Mean (According to its Obsessive Creator - Apparently, Bartholomew Finch, 1897—he was a bit of antsy linguist).
Okay, Bartholomew Finch, bless his tweed and his frankly alarming bun, decided he needed a word that described the feeling when you are being given credit for something, but there is no actual merit in your undertaking. It’s essentially the smug satisfaction that comes from appearing to be competent at something without actually having done much of anything worthwhile. He really wanted it to capture that "resting on one's laurels (that were entirely undeserved)" vibe. The suffix was meant to blend
credit, and creative.
’Credi-…tive
is a fancy term for a little bit of fraud masquerading as confidence! It is the delusion that you are good when, in reality, the only thing you're getting credit for is being very, very lucky.