Word.ws English Dictionary

nonself

nonself noun: any entity other than oneself.

Noun

nonself (countable and uncountable, plural nonselfs or nonselves)

  1. Any entity other than oneself.
    • In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual.2013 May-June, Katrina G. Claw, “Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3
  2. (uncountable) All agents and substances that are not the body's own.
    • In his classic monograph describing the clonal selection theory of the immune response, Burnet (1959) suggested that the immune system distinguishes between self (no antibody response) and nonself (antibody response).1961, George F. Vande Woude, George Klein, Advances in Cancer Research
  3. Anatta.

Adjective

nonself

  1. Of nonself origin.

Forms of nonself

pluralnonselfs
pluralnonselves

Origin of nonself

From non- + self.

Questions about nonself

What does nonself mean?
Nonself means any entity other than oneself.
What part of speech is nonself?
Nonself can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of nonself?
The plural of nonself is nonselfs.

Words near nonself in the dictionary

  1. nonselection
  2. nonselective
  3. nonselectively
  4. nonselectivity
  5. nonselenium
  6. nonself
  7. nonselfadjoint
  8. nonselfdual
  9. nonselfs
  10. nonselling
  11. nonselves

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nonself (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: “nonself.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nonself. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.