May there be christened a new lexical item!

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2003)

I've always adjudged myself an epeolatrist, that is to say, a person who indulges in a love for words, albeit a love that is not pedantic, which would be philology, the study of words, but have recently found myself in a very unbecoming circumstance apropos a mistake I've always been making in my lexical pursuits. For some time now, I've been under the impression that the word "pretentious," having roots in the word pretense (meaning fallacy, speciousness, artificial, et cetera) from where we get the word "pretend," referred to a pathological state in which a person or group of persons has an erroneous appraisal of their intellectual worth such that they impress upon others a desire to be heralded as an exemplary paradigm within the intelligentsia. This seemingly sequitur conclusion I've assumed was the correct usage of the word as implicitly suggested by its emic parts, but lately that doesn't seem to be the case.
I've been reading many boards lately regarding the Matrix Reloaded and continuously see the word "pretentious" being used to pejoratively describe the movie concerning its delving into the philosophical. I thought to myself that that seemed a little odd, for I saw the movie, I listened to the dialogue, and was unable to procure for myself any hint of where this proclaimed pretension was taking place. All of the concepts brought forth were valid, all of the philosophical suggestions seemed in accordance with plot themes that were presented, and like most philosophical inquest, there were struggles amongst the characters to resolve issues. It seems to me that there's nothing pretentious about it, definitely pedantic, because it is clearly evident that the Wachowski Brothers were heavily influenced here by a voluminous degree of intellectual tract stemming from Platonist essentialism to collapsible wave theory and probabilistic phenomenological existentialism. And the brothers obviously have a wonderful command of language; I mean...did you hear the colloquial exchange between Neo and the Architect, simply brilliant, not to mention that Cornel West, one of the leading sociopolitical theorists and theodical philosophers, is a good friend of the filmmakers. You have to be of a significant intellectual caliber to befriend a man that smart and that busy!
So it seems to me that the word "pretentious" has taken on a new meaning...
It now means: A pathological state in which the agent implementing the word, apropos circumstances of high degrees of intellectuality, does such in a defensively umbrageous manner attempting to mask their own inadequacies.
Yeah, from the looks of things....that seems about right.