important
- 1Having great value or meaning, so that it matters and deserves serious attention.
The treaty marked an important turning point in the region's history.
Doctors stress that early diagnosis is important for a full recovery.
UsageOften it is important to + verb or it is important that. Something is important to a person and important for a result.
Similarsignificant, major, crucial, key, vital
Oppositeunimportant, insignificant, minor, trivial
Note
A Latin borrowing: English took it from Medieval Latin importans in the Middle English period. Old English had expressed the idea with heah and hefig, the ancestors of high and heavy. Those words survive, but important took over the job of saying that something matters, leaving traces like high office and heavy responsibility.
- 2Behaving in a pompous, conceited manner; puffed up with a sense of one's own consequence.
UsageToday self-important or pompous is clearer, since important alone is read as mattering.
Note
A meaning now somewhat old-fashioned, met most often in older fiction and phrases like an important air. In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (1811), a character lowers his voice to "an important whisper." The whisper is pompous and self-satisfied, not significant. Modern readers easily mistake it for the everyday "mattering" sense, which has largely overshadowed it.
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Origin
Middle English 'important' came from Medieval Latin 'important-, importāns'. Broken into parts, it is 'import' (to be important) with the suffix '-ant'. It took the place of the native Old English words 'heah' and 'hefig'.