self-flagellatory

Adjective

self-flagellatory (comparative more self-flagellatory, superlative most self-flagellatory)

1. Characterized by self-flagellation; extremely repentant.
   • In this sense, the currently fashionable self-flagellatory school of history is, at the very least, as arrogant and self-centered as the more traditional kind of self-serving history.2005, Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, page 386
   • There is often a muted mea culpa in these semi-autobiographical musings, a self-flagellatory tone that immediately relieves the reader of any suspicions of romanticism or nostalgia about a bygone age and a lost youth.2007, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos, The New Left: Legacy and Continuity, page 15
2. Self-sacrificing.
   • In war-time, self-sacrifice would be the obvious appropriate antidote to this depression, and some such mechanism is clearly at work in, for example, Vera Brittain's self-flagellatory dedication to her voluntary nursing, ...1993, Franz Karl Stanzel, Martin Löschnigg, Intimate enemies, page 412
   • Martyrs are desperate to demonstrate their self-flagellatory capabilities in the hope that someone out there actually cares.2011, Andrew Holmes, Pains in the Office: 50 People You Absolutely, Definitely Must Avoid at Work!

   Synonyms:

   self-denying, abstemious, otherish, selfless, self-abnegatory, self-sacrificing, unselfish