imperious
adjective

- behaving as though you expect everyone to obey you

- marked by arrogant assurance; domineering

- assuming power or authority without justification; arrogant and domineering

- someone who is imperious gives orders in a proud, unpleasant way

Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Oxford Languages, Collins Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

From Latin imperiosus, from imperium — command, authority — from imperare, "to give orders." This word family includes "emperor", "empire", "imperial" and "imperative": all derived from the same Roman verb.

English, characteristically, took one Latin word and assigned its members different jobs. Since the 16th century, imperial has described the rank; imperious describes the attitude. A person can be imperial without being imperious (Marcus Aurelius) and imperious without being imperial (any number of head waiters :-).

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THE POWER PARADOX

Power quietly deletes the skills that earned it. Psychologists call this the "Power Paradox": people rise through listening, empathy and cooperation, then find that authority itself erodes exactly those habits. When the drift sets in, a leader's manner shifts from commanding to imperious.

The distinction matters. Commanding presence invites confidence; imperiousness demands compliance. The imperious executive treats questions as insubordination and waves away inconvenient evidence. Not because the evidence is weak, but because it came from below.

When people learn that disagreement carries a personal cost, they stop reporting problems. The leader ends up sealed inside an echo chamber of agreement, making decisions on filtered information — often the last to know what everyone else already knows.

Good leaders can still take firm command in a crisis — and then hand the floor back.

Helga & Paul Smith

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SYNONYMS

arbitrary, arrogant, authoritarian, autocratic, bossy, commanding, despotic, dictatorial, domineering, haughty, high-handed, imperial, IMPERIOUS, lordly, magisterial, masterful, overbearing, peremptory, pompous, prescriptive, tyrannical

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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"Today's OWAD IMPERIOUS is a compliment on the tennis court and an accusation in the meeting room.”

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