'His overweening pride in his hair left me feeling unwell'). Pride may still switch easily between positive and negative connotations as is the case with many other polysemous words, it is generally easy to tell which meaning is intended, based on context ('We took great pride in our daughter's honesty' vs. The use of pride to refer to a reasonable form of self-respect began to appear in the 14th century, and the word has taken on a number of other shades of meaning since then. In its original sense, pride was hardly something to be proud of, as it carried the meaning of 'inordinate self-esteem' and 'an unreasonable conceit of superiority.' In early use pride was also often found in capitalized form, referring to one of the seven deadly sins. The noun form of pride precedes the verb, although both are quite old (the verb has been in use since the 13th century, and the noun since Old English).
