A great person is not constrained by minor flaws.

Mencius (c. 372?–289? BCE), in the "Gaozi, Part One" chapter of the Mencius, divides the "great person" (大人) from the "small person" (小人). "He who follows the greater part of himself becomes a great person; he who follows the smaller part becomes a small person." Here the "greater part" is the heart-mind (心), and the "smaller part" is the senses of the ears and eyes. The great person meets the world with the breadth of the heart, while the small person has the heart stolen away by the calculations of immediate gain. The expression "daeindaedo" (大人大度) was built upon this Mencian tradition. A representative usage appears in the Book of the Later Han (Hou Han Shu), in the "Biographies of the Magicians," where Guo Tai is appraised as "a great person of great magnanimity, unbound by petty proprieties" (大人大度, 不拘小節). The expression was later cited in the poetry of Li Bai of the Tang and in the letters of Su Dongpo of the Song, cementing the equation "the size of one's magnanimity = the size of one's character."

The Latin "magnanimitas" is made of two parts: magnus (great) + animus (soul, spirit). Translated literally, "great soul" — and this is a literal translation of the Greek "megalopsychia." megas (μέγας, great) + psyche (ψυχή, soul). Aristotle (384–322 BCE), in Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics, placed megalopsychia at the summit of virtue (arete). He defined it as "the great-souled person is one who is worthy of great honors and who also regards himself as such." What matters is that Aristotle's great soul was not arrogance but "a calm that is not shaken by small things." He wrote that "the great-souled person braves danger yet is not agitated by trifling matters, and does not react greatly to insult." The word entered English in the mid-14th century. The OED records its first use around 1340, noting that it settled into Middle English by way of the French magnanimite. In the English-speaking world in particular, magnanimity took on the meaning of "forgiving from a position of victory." Generosity that embraces the defeated rather than taking a victor's revenge — this is the core nuance of the English magnanimity.