Word.ws English Dictionary

self-referential

Syllables: self-re·fer·ent·ialUK/ˈsɛlf ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃl/US/ˈsɛlf ˌɹɛfəˈɹɛn(t)ʃəl/

self-referential adjective: that refers to itself or oneself.

Adjective

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

  1. That refers to itself or oneself.
    • That is a very pleasant line, the one that we have italicized; […] Why did he [Ben Jonson] not write more such? He might answer that he did, and that his poetry was full of enjoyment. But it is not; at least not in the entirely happy, familiar, unmisgiving, self-referential, and yet not self-loving...1854 March 15, Leigh Hunt, “On Poems of Joyous Impulse. A Sequel to the ‘Effusion on Cream,’ Intended as much for Musical, as for Literary Consideration”, in The Musical Times and Singing Class...
    • Self-referential behavior has been defined operationally as the ability of the child to look at its image in the mirror and to show, by pointing and touching its nose, that the image in the mirror there is located in the space here at the physical site of the child itself. In the results reported...1991, Michael Lewis, Margaret Wolan Sullivan, Catherine Stanger, Maya Weiss, “Self Development and Self-conscious Emotions”, in Stella Chess, Margaret E. Hertzig, editors, Annual Progress in Child...
  2. (specifically) In a literary work: referring to the author or the author's other works.
    • It [Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy] also has a design strictly self-referential. The author feigns, that the beatified spirit of his mistress has obtained leave to warn and purify his soul by shewing him the state of things in the next world.1846, Leigh Hunt, “Critical Notice of Dante’s Life and Genius”, in Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers. … In Two Volumes, volume I, London: Chapman and Hall, […], →OCLC, page 41
    • Many women authors extend the sort of metafictional self-scrutiny which The Golden Notebook so extensively sustains: Eva Figes's novels, for example, often raise self-referential questioning of their own representational validity and Muriel Spark teases several of her heroines with unsettling...1991, Edmund J. Smyth, editor, Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction, London: B[radley] T[homas] Batsford Ltd., →ISBN, page 34

Examples of self-referential in a sentence

  • But it is not; at least not in the entirely happy, familiar, unmisgiving, self-referential, and yet not self-loving sense that we speak of.1854 March 15, Leigh Hunt, “On Poems of Joyous Impulse. A Sequel to the ‘Effusion on Cream,’ Intended as much for Musical, as for Literary...
  • In the results reported in both studies, embarrassment, in general, does not occur unless self-referential behavior exists.1991, Michael Lewis, Margaret Wolan Sullivan, Catherine Stanger, Maya Weiss, “Self Development and Self-conscious Emotions”, in Stella...
  • What makes Scream so effective, and so timeless, is that it’s both a winking and self-referential breakdown of the tropes of the horror genre and a nearly flawless embodiment of the same.2017 October 27, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club...

Forms of self-referential

comparativemore self-referential
superlativemost self-referential

Origin of self-referential

From self- + referential.

Words formed from self-referential

Phrases with self-referential

Questions about self-referential

What does self-referential mean?
Self-referential means that refers to itself or oneself.
How do you use self-referential in a sentence?
But it is not; at least not in the entirely happy, familiar, unmisgiving, self-referential, and yet not self-loving sense that we speak of.
What part of speech is self-referential?
Self-referential is an adjective.
How do you pronounce self-referential?
Self-referential is pronounced /ˈsɛlf ɹɛfəˈɹɛnʃl/ (UK).

Words near self-referential in the dictionary

  1. self-reference
  2. self-reference effect
  3. self-referenced
  4. self-references
  5. self-referencing
  6. self-referential
  7. self-referential meaning
  8. self-referential meanings
  9. self-referentialities
  10. self-referentiality
  11. self-referentially

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: self-referential (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-au-self-referential.ogg.

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