Word.ws English Dictionary

do-it-yourself

do-it-yourself is the alternative form of do it yourself.

Meaning of do it yourself

Noun

do it yourself (uncountable)

  1. The practice of doing home improvements and maintenance oneself, rather than employing a professional.
    • THE LONDON & NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY. By O. S. Nock. Ian Allan. 30s.
      [...] One scarcely imagined, for example, that the great steel works at Crewe owed its existence to Sir Richard Moon's penchant for the principle of "Do it yourself", a principle born of a methodical, economical and far-seeing mind.1960 October, “New reading on railways”, in Trains Illustrated, page 640
  2. (attributive, often) The habit or approach of doing something for oneself, rather than for example buying a prepared product.
    • The relationship between punk's do-it-yourself philosophy and the music industry, along with fashion suppliers, […]2020, Matt Grimes, Mike Dines, Punk Now!!: Contemporary Perspectives on Punk

Questions about do-it-yourself

What is do-it-yourself the alternative form of?
Do-it-yourself is the alternative form of do it yourself.

Words near do-it-yourself in the dictionary

  1. do-hinky
  2. do-insertion
  3. do-insertions
  4. do-it-herselfer
  5. do-it-herselfers
  6. do-it-yourself
  7. do-it-yourself-ism
  8. do-it-yourself-ness
  9. do-it-yourselfer
  10. do-it-yourselfers
  11. do-it-yourselfism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: do-it-yourself (page history and authors); do it yourself (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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Cite this entry: “do-it-yourself.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/do-it-yourself. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.