Word.ws English Dictionary

deny oneself

deny oneself verb: to decline the gratification of appetites, desires, impulses, or needs; to practise self-denial.

Verb

deny oneself (third-person singular simple present denies oneself, present participle denying oneself, simple past and past participle denied oneself)

  1. To decline the gratification of appetites, desires, impulses, or needs; to practise self-denial.
    • Let him deny himself, and take up his cross.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 16:24
    • When you treat your basic needs as rewards, you can easily deny yourself good health because you haven't 'earned' it.2023, Amy Arthur, Pace Yourself: How to have energy in an exhausting world

Forms of deny oneself

third-person singular presentdenies oneself
present participledenying oneself
past participledenied oneself
pastdenied oneself

Questions about deny oneself

What does deny oneself mean?
Deny oneself means to decline the gratification of appetites, desires, impulses, or needs; to practise self-denial.
What part of speech is deny oneself?
Deny oneself is a verb.
What is the past tense of deny oneself?
The past tense of deny oneself is denied oneself.

Words near deny oneself in the dictionary

  1. Denverite
  2. Denverites
  3. Denville
  4. deny
  5. deny of
  6. deny oneself
  7. deny'd
  8. Denyer
  9. denyin'
  10. denying
  11. denying of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: deny oneself (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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