The term supercilious (meaning “haughty”) was first introduced in a 1528 collection of poetic verse. It is derived from the Latin word supercilium, which originally meant “eyebrow” but later came to be associated with “arrogance”. The link between the two is that arrogant individuals often raise their eyebrows in a pretentious manner. Breaking it down further, we can see that the prefix super- translates to “above”, while the noun cilium refers to “eyelid”. The root of super can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European origins, specifically the roots hegs (meaning “out of”) and upo (meaning “above”). On the other hand, cilium has its roots in Proto-Italic and ultimately goes back to Proto-Indo-European kel, which means “to cover”. Despite gaining popularity in the sixteenth century, the usage of supercilious has significantly decreased over time, now accounting for only about 0.000035% of words used in English literature.
