Word.ws English Dictionary

self-lie

self-lie noun: a lie told to oneself.

Noun

self-lie (plural self-lies)

  1. (rare) A lie told to oneself.
    • And there comes even to the thinker an hour when he believes at last, that never will he be a social star nor great in anything but his thoughts, and he becomes resigned, which means convinced of the truth of the self-lie that all the lonely days he has been telling.1910, Alan Durward Mickle, The Great Longing: A Book for Vain People, page 161
    • At the same time I want to hold on to the fact that each modality of the self-lie also performs the presence, albeit as an obscene underside, of a traumatic truth.1998, Judy Simons, Kate Fullbrook, Writing, a woman's business, page 139

Forms of self-lie

pluralself-lies

Origin of self-lie

From self- + lie.

Questions about self-lie

What does self-lie mean?
Self-lie means a lie told to oneself.
What part of speech is self-lie?
Self-lie is a noun.
What is the plural of self-lie?
The plural of self-lie is self-lies.

Words near self-lie in the dictionary

  1. self-licking ice cream cones
  2. self-licking ice-cream cone
  3. self-licking ice-cream cones
  4. self-licking lollipop
  5. self-licking lollipops
  6. self-lie
  7. self-lies
  8. self-life
  9. self-limitation
  10. self-limited
  11. self-limiting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-lie (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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