apocryphiar

English

Etymology

Coined by war journalist Martha Gellhorn from apocrypha.

Noun

apocryphiar (plural apocryphiars)

1. One who rewrites history to their own advantage or tells self-aggrandizing falsehoods.
   • 1996, Leo Katz, Ill-Gotten Gains, →ISBN:

     Martha Gellhorn made a long list of such incidents, concluding that as an "apocryphiar. . . Miss Hellman ranks sublime."

   • 2001, Andrea Lynn, Shadow Lovers: The Last Affairs of H.G. Wells, page 351:

     Became a shameful embarrassing apocryphiar about himself, which I believe damaged him as a man, but he was not like that in Spain nor in China . . . never in my hearing.

   • 2006, Peter Moreira, Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn, →ISBN:

     There's no denying that Hemingway was, to use a polite term invented by Gellhorn, an “apocryphiar”—not just a liar, but a man who invents stories about himself, casting himself in the best possible light.

   • 2014, Orest Stocco, The Lion that Swallowed Hemingway, →ISBN, page 103:

     How could he be so true in his craft and be a self-aggrandizing apocryphiar who cheated on his wives in his everyday life?

   • 2016, Carl Rollyson, Confessions of a Serial Biographer, →ISBN, page 39:

     The trend toward “apocryphism, a meld of apocryphal story and apocryphiar,” was growing at an alarming rate—in other words, the telling of stories by the famous about the famous who in the same breath make themselves more famous.

Further reading

• Moorehead, Caroline. "Gellhorn: a twentieth-century life." New York:Picador 2003. (Page 5)