Word.ws English Dictionary

in spite of oneself

in spite of oneself adverb: against one's own plan or desire, or against one's better judgment.

Adverb

in spite of oneself (not comparable)

  1. Against one's own plan or desire, or against one's better judgment.
    • I laughed in spite of myself as the crying child told me how he had accidentally sat on a cactus.
    Synonyms:
    despite oneself
  2. Despite one's flaws or foibles.

Synonyms of in spite of oneself

Questions about in spite of oneself

What does in spite of oneself mean?
In spite of oneself means against one's own plan or desire, or against one's better judgment.
What part of speech is in spite of oneself?
In spite of oneself is an adverb.

Words near in spite of oneself in the dictionary

  1. in spades
  2. in special
  3. in specie
  4. in spirit
  5. in spite of
  6. in spite of oneself
  7. in spite of someone's teeth
  8. in splendor
  9. in splendour
  10. in splits
  11. in state

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in spite of 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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Cite this entry: “in spite of oneself.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_spite_of_oneself. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.