power trip

power trip

A period of exerting an excessive degree of control or authority over others, especially as a means of inflating or bolstering one's ego or self-worth. Tom has been on a real power trip ever since he was promoted to regional manager. She's been hacking into the school's online infrastructure to mess with people's grades and personal details. I think it's more of a power trip than anything else, really.
See also: power, trip
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • on a power trip
  • body positive
  • body-posi
  • swallow (one's) pride
  • swallow one's pride
  • swallow pride
  • swallow your pride
  • like to hear (oneself) talk
  • like to hear oneself talk
  • amour propre
References in periodicals archive
What makes "Power Trip" unusually interesting is the fact that Devlin refuses to take sides.
Power Trip
The opportunity to lust for; and experience, this power trip has been democratized in the 21st century, allowing more of the masses to play in the game, and we sanitize references to it by using such aphorisms as "information is knowledge," and "knowledge is power."
WEB CASTING ONE'S LIFE AWAY
It may have been a power trip for him--maybe he wanted to make his mark."
REDWOOD ROBIN HOOD BOOSTS FAILING BALLET
MCs and callers hype each other up in a spiraling feedback loop of fervor and exultation, relaying "big shouts" and "respect" back and forth: "Come alive, London!" "Coming on strong!" It is a self-induced hypergasm, a shared hallucination of in-the-place-to-be grandiosity inflamed by stations who boast of "running t'ings" and by gangs of youths "locked" in at home who call themselves "massives." Massification and excitation are the raison d'etre of the pirates (degraded descendants of Radio Alice, the unlicensed Italian broadcasters who so excited Guattari in the late '70s): a power trip for the powerless, a goalless, apolitical unity.
Generation E: British rave
What makes them different is that theirs is also a power trip. What they're doing could save or destroy the world.
Star warriors
Denying the dead a decent burial is a macabre power trip by heinous villains we shouldn't tolerate in a civilised society.
No body, no parole
POWER TRIP: Soccer fans can enjoy the World Cup at the Pageant of Power this weekendPhoto: ONEDITION
Pageant of Power joins the World Cup party
Power Trip played the Death Match last year and completely destroyed the place.
Power Trip
Brown said that community service "s**t is a b***h", as it was more of a power trip for the District Attorney.
I hate Community service, says Chris Brown
For anyone who witnessed the blood-soaked battle between Blair and Brown first-hand, the revelations contained in the new book, entitled Power Trip, come as no great surprise.
McBrideshead Revisited: Spin-doctor Damian Reopens Labour's Old Brown-Blair Wounds
On The Power Trip My new book is set on a yacht in Cabo San Lucas (Mexico).
ON POINT
There are few better places than the intimacy of the Barfly to witness a band with songs as incendiary as Nothing Remains, Resurrection, Power Trip, Cleansation, Eyes of a Criminal, Severed and Pure Hatred.
Reviews: Declaration of war; CHIMAIRA Barfly, Birmingham
The girls' emotional ups and downs, as well as the underlying message about rejecting this kind of power trip friendship, are conveyed clearly and believably.
Koss, Amy Goldman. The girls
BIG BROTHER: POWER TRIP LIVE LAUNCH (9pm Channel 5) THE first of two live shows fronted by the very capable Emma Willis.
TODAY'S TV