Is narcist an accepted spelling of narcissist? [closed]
Wiktionary lists "narcist" as an "alternative form of narcissist." A few other online dictionaries list it as well, but none have much information on it.
It doesn't say nonstandard, so does that imply it's an accepted spelling by the bodies that be? Is it just rarely used? Archaic?
The only etymological information I could find was at Wiktionary:
First attested in the 20th century. Probably a borrowing, compare English narcist and German Narzisst. Ultimately from Latin Narcissus, from Ancient Greek Νάρκισσος (Nárkissos). This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.
Do you know more about the etymology of "narcist" and whether this is an accepted spelling? Perhaps an academic with access to more in-depth materials can provide further information.
First, if your professor or even your mom says narcist is unacceptable, it’s unacceptable. You will get no points trying to make a case for a word that floats in clouds of obscurity headed for oblivion.
Yes, narcist is a word—one Wiktionary categorizes as “dated”:
Formerly in common use, and still in occasional use, but now unfashionable;... Dated is not as strong as archaic or obsolete.
Source: Wiktionary Appendix:Glossary: dated
Under “quotations,” Wiktionary cites a few sources using the word.
If you don’t believe in Wiktionary, here’s narcist in Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language (Second Edition, Unabridged, 1939):
nar´cism, n. Narcissism. — nar´cist, n. — nar·cis´tic, adj.
Oxford English Dictionary does not list narcist, but it does list narcism. In the second edition of the OED (1989), narcism makes an appearance under the entry for narcissism, along with the labels erroneous and incorrect:
narcissism, n.
Self-love and admiration that find emotional satisfaction in self-contemplation; occas. (erron.) narcism.
1938 H. A. MURRAY Explor. in Personality iii. 180 Narcism (or Egophilia) is technical for self-love.
1970 HINSIE & CAMPBELL Psychiatric Dict. (ed. 4) 487/2 Narcism, a shortened (and incorrect) form of narcissism.
Source: Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (1989) (login required)
However, in the OED’s third and most recent edition (2003), narcism appears as its own entry, without reference to erroneousness or incorrectness. Here we see that narcism was “formed within English, by clipping or shortening”:
narcism, n.
Frequency (in current use): [Band 2*]
[*Band 2 contains words which occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage. These are almost exclusively terms which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people. Many are technical terms from specialized discourses.... ]
Origin: Formed within English, by clipping or shortening; perhaps modelled on a German lexical item, or perhaps modelled on a French lexical item. Etymon: NARCISSISM n.
Etymology: Shortened < NARCISSISM n., after German Narzissmus (1924 in Freud) or French narcisme (1918).Chiefly Psychology.
= NARCISSISM n.
1938 H. A. MURRAY Explor. in Personality iii. 180 Narcism (or Egophilia) is technical for self-love.
1945 Mod. Lang. Notes 60 198 These birds [in Rilke’s Flamingos] are not supposed to seduce each other (which would be only a natural biological fact) but themselves in their extreme complacent narcism.
1951 J. S. BRUNER in R. R. Blake & G. V. Ramsey Perception v. 142 The theory of schizophrenia as a regression to primary narcism, a withdrawal from object relationships.
1999 Calgary (Alberta) Herald (Nexis) 7 Aug. g9 They may be getting increasingly selfish and self-absorbed because of the narcism increasing, so they tell their spouse that he or she is selfish.
Source: Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition (2003) (login required)
Noted under the entry narcissism in Sigmund Freud, His Personality, His Teaching, & His School by Fritz Wittels (1924) is:
Indeed, in A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud (translated by G. Stanley Hall and published in 1920), narcistic appears 34 times and narcism 21. These have been shortened from the German versions narzißtische/n (narcissitic) and narzißmus (narcissism) respectively (see Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse).
Nowadays, there are few, if any, acceptable reasons to use the word narcist. In doing so, you would surely issue an invitation to doubt your ability to spell, and the issuance of such an invitation alone shows an error in judgement.
If Google Ngrams tells you it's outranked by a factor 2000, you can be sure it's not a widely accepted spelling.
When you look at the top hits, you can see that the first one is even taken from a Dutch magazine mistakenly included in the English corpus.
For the record, in Dutch we do use the word 'narcist', and 'narcissist' is wrong. The etymology section you cited is also for the Dutch usage of the word, not for the English. As for why we shortened the word, I don't have a clue.