the.com/attitude
The tax you charge the world for the privilege of your presence.
means A settled way of thinking or feeling that shapes how you act — and, in everyday slang, swagger or defiance worn like a posture.
from From French 'attitude,' borrowed from Italian 'attitudine,' which traces back to Late Latin 'aptitudo' — fitness or aptitude, from 'aptus,' meaning fitted or apt. It began life as an art-criticism term for the pose or posture of a figure in a painting or statue — literally how a body was 'fitted' into a stance — before it climbed off the canvas in the 18th-19th centuries to describe a person's mental posture, and eventually slid into slang for the posture of someone who dares you to say something about it.
- original meaning
- a painter's term for posture, not personality
- psych split
- has a thought part, feeling part, and action part
- slang turn
- 1960s street use made it mean defiance, not stance
- measurability
- psychologists actually score it on scales, like a quiz