Word.ws English Dictionary

self

/ˈsɛlf/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Northumbria/ˈsɛl/

self pronoun: himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).

Pronoun

self (plural selves)

  1. (obsolete, rare) Himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).
    • This argument was put forward by the defendant self.
    • Now that I put on my glasses I could see that the hut was empty but for our two selves; that it must have been absolutely empty till we entered.1898 July 18, The Leader, Melbourne, page 34, column 1
  2. (humorous) Myself, oneself.
    • I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.

Noun

self (plural selves or selfs)

  1. One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.
    • She remained her usual cheerful self despite recent setbacks
    • John Locke argued that the mind is not like a furnished flat, prestocked before occupation with innate ideas, but like a home put together piecemeal from mental acquisitions picked up bit by bit. The self is thus the bit-by-bit product of experience and education: we are what we become - or, in...2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.1, at p.7
  2. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
    • Portia:
      To these injunctions every one doth swear
      That comes to hazard for my worthless self.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn...1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans...
  3. An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
    • The self, the I, is recognized in every act of intelligence as the subject to which that act belongs. It is I that perceive, I that imagine, I that remember, I that attend, I that compare, I that feel, I that will, I that am conscious.a. 1857, William Hamilton, “Lecture IX”, in H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, editors, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London...
    • The preposterous altruism too![…]Resist not evil. It is an insane immolation of self—as bad intrinsically as fakirs stabbing themselves or anchorites warping their spines in caves scarcely large enough for a fair-sized dog.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
  4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
  5. A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
  6. A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
  7. (molecular biology) Any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).
    • Similarity profiles between helper T cell epitopes (of self or microbial antigens and allergens) and human or microbial SWISSPROT collections were produced. For each antigen, both collections yielded largely overlapping profiles, demonstrating that self-nonself discrimination does not rely on...2000, G Ristori et al., “Compositional bias and mimicry toward the nonself proteome in immunodominant T cell epitopes of self and nonself antigens”, in FASEB Journal: the official journal of the...
    • 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

Verb

self (third-person singular simple present selfs, present participle selfing, simple past and past participle selfed)

  1. To fertilize by the same individual; to self-fertilize or self-pollinate.
  2. To fertilize by the same strain; to inbreed.

Adjective

self

  1. Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed.
    • a self bow: one made from a single piece of wood
    • a self flower or plant: one which is wholly of one colour
  2. (obsolete) Same, identical.
    • self-coloured
    • I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth / That which I owe is lost; but if you please / To shoot another arrow that self way / Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, / As I will watch the aim, or to find both, / Or bring your latter hazard back again, / And thankfully rest debtor for the...c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  3. (obsolete) Belonging to oneself; own.
  4. (molecular biology) Of or relating to any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).
    • Similarity profiles between helper T cell epitopes (of self or microbial antigens and allergens) and human or microbial SWISSPROT collections were produced. For each antigen, both collections yielded largely overlapping profiles, demonstrating that self-nonself discrimination does not rely on...2000, G Ristori et al., “Compositional bias and mimicry toward the nonself proteome in immunodominant T cell epitopes of self and nonself antigens”, in FASEB Journal: the official journal of the...
    Antonyms:
    nonself

Proper noun capitalized: Self

Self

  1. A surname.
    • Kansas has self-imposed a four-game suspension for head coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend to begin this season along with several other sanctions, the school announced Wednesday.2022 November 2, CJ Moore, Dana O'Neil, “Kansas self-imposes 4-game suspension for Bill Self, Kurtis Townsend: Explaining the sanctions”, in The Athletic, archived from the original on 14 Jan 2026
  2. A freed slave surname originating as an occupation.
  3. An unincorporated community in Boone County, Arkansas, United States.

self meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

self in Hindi

individual person as the object of own reflective consciousness
खुद khud, ख़ुद xud, स्वयं svayã, नफ्स naphs, ज़ात zāt

self in Tamil

individual person as the object of own reflective consciousness
சுயம் cuyam

self in Marathi

individual person as the object of own reflective consciousness
स्वतः svataḥ

self in Urdu

individual person as the object of own reflective consciousness
خود xud
More languagesFewer languages
self in Bengali
খোদ khōd
self in Malayalam
അഹം, ബോധമനസ്സ്, സ്വത്വം, സത്ത
self in Kannada
ತಾನೇ, ತಾನು, ಆತ್ಮ, ಸ್ವ
self in Punjabi
آپ āp, ਆਪ āpa, ਜ਼ਾਤ zāt, ਖ਼ੁਦ xud
self in Odia
ଆପେ āpe, ନିଜ୍ nij, ଆପଣ āpaṇa
self in Sanskrit
स्वयं svayaṃ, आत्मन् ātmán
self in Assamese
আপুনি apuni
self in Pashto
ځان źān
self in Tagalog
sarili
self in Arabic
نَفْس nafs
self in Indonesian
sendiri
self in Persian
خود xod
self in Thai
ตน dton, ตัวตน dtuua-dton, อัตตา àt-dtaa
self in Vietnamese
bản thân

Examples of self in a sentence

  • The self is thus the bit-by-bit product of experience and education: we are what we become - or, in Wordworth's later phrase, the child is the father of the man.2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.1, at p.7
  • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self.1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The...
  • Similarity profiles between helper T cell epitopes (of self or microbial antigens and allergens) and human or microbial SWISSPROT collections were produced.2000, G Ristori et al., “Compositional bias and mimicry toward the nonself proteome in immunodominant T cell epitopes of self and nonself...
  • I am made of that self mettle as my sister.c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First...

All 40 example sentences with self

Synonyms of self

4 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of self

Forms of self

Pronoun
pluralselves
alternative form (obsolete)selfe
alternative form (obsolete)silf
alternative form (obsolete)silfe
Noun
pluralselves
pluralselfs
Verb
third-person singular presentselfs
present participleselfing
past participleselfed
pastselfed

Plural of self: selves or selfs

Origin of self

From Middle English salve, self, silf, from Old English self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz, from Proto-Indo-European *selbʰ- (“one's own”). Cognates Cognates with Saterland Frisian sälven, säärm, sääuwen (“oneself”), West Frisian sels (“oneself”), Bavarian söbe (“identical, same”), söber (“self”), Dutch zelf (“myself, oneself”), German selber (“self”), selbst (“by oneself”), Luxembourgish selwer (“self”), Yiddish זעלב (zelb, “same”), Danish selv (“self”), Elfdalian siuov (“self”), Faroese sjálvur (“self”), Icelandic sjálfur (“self”), Norwegian Bokmål selv, Norwegian Nynorsk sjølv, Swedish själv (“self”), Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌱𐌰 (silba, “self”).

* From self. A surname taken up by freed slaves, who have become of themselves, they being self-owned.

Words formed from self

Phrases with self

33 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with self

38 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about self

What does self mean?
Self means himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).
What is self in Hindi?
Self in Hindi is खुद (khud), ख़ुद (xud), स्वयं (svayã). See Self meaning in Hindi.
How do you use self in a sentence?
The self is thus the bit-by-bit product of experience and education: we are what we become - or, in Wordworth's later phrase, the child is the father of the man.
What part of speech is self?
Self can be a pronoun, a noun, a verb or an adjective.
How do you pronounce self?
Self is pronounced /ˈsɛlf/.

Words near self in the dictionary

  1. Seleukidae
  2. Seleukides
  3. Seleukids
  4. selexipag
  5. Seleção
  6. self
  7. self acceptance
  8. self bow
  9. self bows
  10. self checkout
  11. self checkouts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self (page history and authors); Self (page history and authors); self (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); self (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); آپ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); ଆପଣ (Odia) (page history and authors); আপুনি (Assamese) (page history and authors); ځان (Pashto) (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-self.ogg.

Cite this entry: “self.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.