Word.ws English Dictionary

sell oneself short

sell oneself short phrase: to belittle oneself in judgment; to underestimate oneself and one's abilities (and thus avoid being acknowledged to the deserved extent).

Phrase

sell oneself short

  1. To belittle oneself in judgment; to underestimate oneself and one's abilities (and thus avoid being acknowledged to the deserved extent).
    • don't sell yourself short
    • Don't sell yourself short. You're better than most around here.

Questions about sell oneself short

What does sell oneself short mean?
Sell oneself short means to belittle oneself in judgment; to underestimate oneself and one's abilities (and thus avoid being acknowledged to the deserved extent).
What part of speech is sell oneself short?
Sell oneself short is a phrase.

Words near sell oneself short in the dictionary

  1. sell one's life dearly
  2. sell one's own grandmother
  3. sell one's soul
  4. sell one's soul to the devil
  5. sell oneself
  6. sell oneself short
  7. sell order
  8. sell orders
  9. sell out
  10. sell out from under
  11. sell past the close

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sell oneself short (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: “sell oneself short.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sell_oneself_short. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.