self-interest
self-interest noun: one's personal interest or advantage, especially when pursued without regard for others.
Noun
self-interest (countable and uncountable, plural self-interests)
- One's personal interest or advantage, especially when pursued without regard for others.
- I cannot abandon my husband for the sake of self-interest and personal gain.
- And so he reasoned until the first generous impulse to proclaim the truth and relinquish his titles and his estates to their rightful owner was forgotten beneath the mass of sophistries which self-interest had advanced.1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 99
- Synonyms:
- self
self-interest meaning in Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and Telugu
self-interest in Tamil
- தன்னலம்
self-interest in Marathi
- self-interest
- स्वार्थ svārtha
self-interest in Bengali
- self-interest
- স্বার্থ śartho
self-interest in Telugu
- self-interest
- స్వార్థము svārthamu, స్వప్రయోజనము svaprayōjanamu
More languagesFewer languages
- self-interest in Malayalam
- സ്വാർത്ഥതാൽപര്യം, സ്വാർത്ഥത, സ്വാർത്ഥം, മമത
- self-interest in Kannada
- ಸ್ವಹಿತದೃಷ್ಟಿ, ಸ್ವಪ್ರಯೋಜನಾಸಕ್ತಿ, ಸ್ವಾರ್ಥಪರ, ಆತ್ಮಹಿತ
- self-interest in Punjabi
- ਸ੍ਵਾਰਥ svārath
- self-interest in Vietnamese
- tư lợi
Examples of self-interest in a sentence
- Corruption becomes fatal when those in power are no longer able to distinguish the difference between self-interest and the national interest.2022 July 27, Charles Hugh Smith, There Won't Be Any Winners Because The Status Quo Is Corrupt Everywhere:
- Government standards of decency and honesty were quite low, and decision-makers were tainted with self-interest and corruption at the very highest level.2023 March 8, Howard Johnston, “Was Marples the real railway wrecker?”, in RAIL, number 978, page 52:
Synonyms of self-interest
Forms of self-interest
| plural | self-interests |
|---|
Origin of self-interest
From self- + interest.
Words formed from self-interest
- broad self-interest
- economic self-interest
- enlightened self-interest
- naked self-interest
- narrow self-interest
Questions about self-interest
- What does self-interest mean?
- Self-interest means one's personal interest or advantage, especially when pursued without regard for others.
- What is self-interest in Tamil?
- Self-interest in Tamil is தன்னலம். See Self-interest meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use self-interest in a sentence?
- Corruption becomes fatal when those in power are no longer able to distinguish the difference between self-interest and the national interest.
- What part of speech is self-interest?
- Self-interest is a noun.
- What is the plural of self-interest?
- The plural of self-interest is self-interests.
Words near self-interest in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: self-interest (page history and authors); self-interest (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); स्वार्थ (Marathi) (page history and authors); স্বার্থ (Bengali) (page history and authors); స్వప్రయోజనము (Telugu) (page history and authors); self-interest (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); self-interest (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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Cite this entry: “self-interest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/self-interest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.