Cocky or Confident?

 

While looking up the definition of the two words, cocky and confident, I was interested to see if one of these words was used in the other’s definition.

Cocky: Arrogant; pertly self-assertive. Confident: sure of oneself; having no uncertainty about one’s own abilities, correctness, successfulness, self-confident; bold.

When neither of the words were, I asked myself, “How much alike are these terms really?” Then I realized that if two words were truly alike, they would be synonyms, so I looked up the synonyms of cocky and confident. 

Cocky: arrogant, brash, certain, conceited, confident, egotistical, positive, presomptuos, sure, and vain.

Confident: bold, brave, convinced, courageous, dauntless, fearless, high hope, hopefull, intrepid, positive, presumptuous, sanguine, sure, trusting, undaunted, upbeat, and valiant.

As you can see, cocky and confident have qiute a few words alike in their list of synonyms, but it’s only cocky that has confident as a synonym.

Are you cocky or are you just confident?  There are people here at Howard that swear they’re the best at this, and the best at that.  But are they being cocky or confident?  Some people think there is a difference between the two words, but is there really?  I feel there is a difference, because when you’re confident, you don’t go around show-boating about how you’re the best at something.  However,  if someone challenges you, it’s okay to show that you are smart or good at something; that is confidence. 

When you’re cocky, you just pop out of nowhere and brag about how good you are at something, while bringing others down.

For instance, in an imaginary game of basketball, Bob will be the confident person and Billy will be the cocky person:

 Bob and Billy were walking in the hallway, talking about the Magic game.  Bob says, “I was shooting baskets yesterday after school and I only missed 3 out of the 12 shots, we should play later on.” “You really want to play me? I don’t want to beat you that bad. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I was shooting hoops just last week and made all of the 15 that I shot. So are you really sure you want to play me still?” Bill said in a cocky reply.

Tiffany from Page 15, who also comes to help the Hype staff, even gave her opinion on being cocky and being confident, “ …cocky lends to someone bringing another down in order to seem better: usually involves smack talk, bragging or boasting. While confidence is: reserved, modest and diplomatic. Confidence comes from within and is about being self assured, while cocky is usually a mask to cover up insecurity by trying to make others seem as if they are less… “

So which one are you?

by Alexis R.