navel-gazing

[ney-vuhl-gey-zing]

noun

Slang.

1. excessive absorption in self-analysis or focus on a single issue.

navel-gazing

noun

1. informal,  self-absorbed behaviour

Word History and Origins

Origin of navel-gazing¹

First recorded in 1955–60; navel ( def. ) + gaz(e) ( def. ) + -ing ¹ ( def. ); perhaps from Hours With the Mystics (1856) by Robert Alfred Vaughan, English Congregationalist minister and author (1823–57), “...if a man shut himself up… turning his thoughts inward, gazing towards his navel..., he would at length behold a divine glory….”

Example Sentences

In its short history, Wikipedia has had its fair share of navel-gazing controversies—an entry detailing them has almost 400 footnotes.

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Are Scots 'navel-gazing' or are things that bad in Europe?

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“The idealism of the 1960s was yielding to the materialism of the 1980s, a new preoccupation with the navel-gazing, ego-stroking life,” Grynbaum writes.

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The amount of navel-gazing that took place in those years was epic.

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Throw in the sheer tonnage of think pieces and appreciations and other navel-gazing and you’d be forgiven for asking: Do we also need a book about Lorne Michaels?

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