Word.ws English Dictionary

self-help

self-help noun: the practice of bettering oneself without relying on the assistance of others.

Noun

self-help (uncountable)

  1. The practice of bettering oneself without relying on the assistance of others.
    • a self-help book
    • Look at the self-help titles in the bookstore, and you'll get a few clues about our culture. They're all about aggression and acquisition. It wouldn't be at all surprising to see a book called How to Force your Will on Other People by Giving Them the Shaft and Fucking Them out of Their Money.1997, George Carlin, Brain Droppings, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 91
  2. An act of redressing or preventing a wrong by one's own actions rather than through legal proceedings.
    • self-help repossession
    • Murder is dealt with by the law of blood-revenge, but the innocent manslayer may seek asylum at God's altar. With murder are ranked man-stealing, offences against parents, and witchcraft. Other injuries are occasions of self-help or of private suits to be adjusted at the sanctuary.1892, W. Robertson Smith, The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, page 340

self-help meaning in Kannada and Gujarati

self-help in Kannada

ಸ್ವಾವಲಂಬನೆ, ಸ್ವಸಹಾಯ, ತನ್ನೊದವಿ, ತನ್ನೊತ್ತಾಸೆ

self-help in Gujarati

bettering oneself without relying on the assistance of others
સ્વસહાય svashāya

Synonyms of self-help

Origin of self-help

From self- + help.

Words formed from self-help

Questions about self-help

What does self-help mean?
Self-help means the practice of bettering oneself without relying on the assistance of others.
What is self-help in Kannada?
Self-help in Kannada is ಸ್ವಾವಲಂಬನೆ, ಸ್ವಸಹಾಯ, ತನ್ನೊದವಿ. See Self-help meaning in Kannada.
What part of speech is self-help?
Self-help is a noun.

Words near self-help in the dictionary

  1. self-healed
  2. self-healing
  3. self-heals
  4. self-heating
  5. self-helixing
  6. self-help
  7. self-helper
  8. self-helpers
  9. self-helpish
  10. self-helpy
  11. self-heterodyne

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-help (page history and authors); self-help (Kannada Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-self-help.wav.

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