Word.ws English Dictionary

selfly

/ˈsɛlfli/

selfly adjective: of or pertaining to self or one's own self, personal.

Adjective

selfly (comparative more selfly, superlative most selfly)

  1. Of or pertaining to self or one's own self, personal.
    • This denotes and declares the divided tongues, where every property had brought itself forth out of the universal sensual tongue into a selfishness and a peculiar selfly understanding, so that they did not any longer understand one another […]2001, Jed Rasula, Steve McCaffery, Imagining Language: An Anthology

Adverb

selfly (not comparable)

  1. In, of, or by one's self; of one's own accord, voluntary, automatic.
    • Thy gloomy Front, that selfly hath no light1880, Josuah Sylvester, The complete works of Joshuah Sylvester

Forms of selfly

comparativemore selfly
superlativemost selfly

Origin of selfly

From Middle English selfly, from Old English selflīċ (“automatic, spontaneous, voluntary”); equivalent to self + -ly.

Questions about selfly

What does selfly mean?
Selfly means of or pertaining to self or one's own self, personal.
What part of speech is selfly?
Selfly can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce selfly?
Selfly is pronounced /ˈsɛlfli/.

Words near selfly in the dictionary

  1. selflessnesses
  2. selflike
  3. selfline
  4. selflines
  5. selflove
  6. selfly
  7. selfmate
  8. selfmates
  9. selfmetathesis
  10. selfname
  11. selfnames

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: selfly (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.

Last updated:

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