haha i find it funny that OP ' s name is hopelesslywrong D <| sep |> Just speculating I would only use grandiose for something a human did or planned , like a grandiose building or a grandiose plan to take over the world . It has to be intentional and over the top to be grandiose . So the negative connotation could have something to do with the democratic and iconoclastic parts of American society . It used to be an article of faith for a lot of the English and Dutch religious groups that founded the United States that decorations in churches were too aristocratic and too Catholic . For a while after the Revolution , we Americans really didn ' t like fancy things , and viewed all such things as showy and pretentious . Working class areas like Pittsburgh were stereotypical for attitudes like that . More than two kinds of cheese for sale ? Ugh . Rich people . I ' m not sure if the word has the same connotation in British English .