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I'm a bit confused as to the difference between arrogant and conceited.

From my understanding, arrogance is the equivalent of being confident but rubbing it in people's faces. For example, achieving the top of a leaderboard and then boasting about how great you are.

Conceit, I believe, is similar in that you may be boasting, but it's based more on unfounded measure. For example, they may make third place in the a race against the arrogant man, but they feel they would have gotten first place if only they had gotten an hour of sleep more. So conceit comes in their coping with not being so great, while the arrogant individual will at least admit defeat and be unable to rub their greatness in someone's face.

What are the exact differences between these words?

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[Urban Dictionary] conceitful: some-one that is arrogantly ignorant, or ignorantly arrogant or some-one that is both. [hyphens not mine.] – Kris Feb 22 at 7:14
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2 Answers

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From Merriam-Webster:

Arrogance - an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner.

Conceit - excessive appreciation of one's own worth or virtue.

Clearly the two words have considerable overlap in meaning in some contexts - though we never say, for example, "He conceitedly elbowed her aside", or "Describing terrorists as 'freedom fighters' is an arrogance that doesn't work", so they're certainly not complete synonyms.

For OP's purposes it may suffice to note that on average arrogance is more "external" - how a person acts towards others, and conceit is more "internal" - how highly he rates himself.

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So, one with a conceited mindset behaves arrogantly with others, then? – Kris Feb 22 at 7:11
@Kris: Not necessarily - for whatever reason, the conceited person may decide not to manifest his disdain. Or he may erroneously have overvalued his social/intellectual worth, for example, and be socialising with people he considers to be his peers, without realising they are simply tolerating him rather than having any real interest in his earnestly-delivered drivel. – FumbleFingers Feb 22 at 13:22
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up vote 1 down vote

An arrogant person will boast about how wonderful they are. A conceited person will just assume that you know haw fantastic they are, and if you don't you are probably not worth talking to.

A person who is both will assume you know how wonderful they were yesterday, but will have to tell you how phenomenal they are today.

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Hm...my understanding of those two words is in the other direction: arrogance is presumptive, conceit is explicit. – Mitch Feb 21 at 17:46
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