self

Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed.

Adjective

  1. Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed.
    • a self bow: one made from a single piece of wood
    • a self flower or plant: one which is wholly of one colour
  2. Same, identical.
    • self-coloured
    • I owe you much, and, like a wilful youth / That which I owe is lost; but if you please / To shoot another arrow that self way / Which you did shoot the first, I do not doubt, / As I will watch the aim, or to find both,...
    • I am made of that self mettle as my sister. - c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard,...
  3. Belonging to oneself; own.
  4. Of or relating to any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).
    • Similarity profiles between helper T cell epitopes (of self or microbial antigens and allergens) and human or microbial SWISSPROT collections were produced. For each antigen, both collections yielded largely overlapping...

    Antonyms: nonself

Origin

From Middle English salve, self, silf, from Old English self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz, from Proto-Indo-European *selbʰ- (“one's own”). Cognates Cognates with Saterland Frisian sälven, säärm, sääuwen (“oneself”), West Frisian sels (“oneself”), Bavarian söbe (“identical, same”), söber (“self”), Dutch zelf (“myself, oneself”), German selber (“self”), selbst (“by oneself”), Luxembourgish selwer (“self”), Yiddish זעלב (zelb, “same”), Danish selv (“self”), Elfdalian siuov (“self”), Faroese sjálvur (“self”), Icelandic sjálfur (“self”), Norwegian Bokmål selv, Norwegian Nynorsk sjølv, Swedish själv (“self”), Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌱𐌰 (silba, “self”).

Forms

selfe silf silfe

Derived

selfbow

Noun

  1. One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.
    • She remained her usual cheerful self despite recent setbacks
    • John Locke argued that the mind is not like a furnished flat, prestocked before occupation with innate ideas, but like a home put together piecemeal from mental acquisitions picked up bit by bit. The self is thus the...
  2. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
    • Portia: To these injunctions every one doth swear That comes to hazard for my worthless self. - c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies,...
    • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of...
  3. An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
    • The self, the I, is recognized in every act of intelligence as the subject to which that act belongs. It is I that perceive, I that imagine, I that remember, I that attend, I that compare, I that feel, I that will, I...
    • The preposterous altruism too![…]Resist not evil. It is an insane immolation of self—as bad intrinsically as fakirs stabbing themselves or anchorites warping their spines in caves scarcely large enough for a fair-sized...
  4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
  5. A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
  6. A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
  7. Any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).
    • Similarity profiles between helper T cell epitopes (of self or microbial antigens and allergens) and human or microbial SWISSPROT collections were produced. For each antigen, both collections yielded largely overlapping...
    • In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual. -...

Forms

selves selfs selfe silf silfe

Synonyms

cyberself herself himself itself myself non-self oneself one's self ourselves technoself themselves thyself yourself yourselves

Antonyms

nonself

Related

self- person I ego

Derived

antiself catself dreamself ego-self no-self note to self not-self ownself polyself salicide self-abuse self-care self-centered self-contained selfdom selfer self goal selfheal selfhood self-hosted selficide selfie selfish selfism

Pronoun

  1. Himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).
    • This argument was put forward by the defendant self.
    • Now that I put on my glasses I could see that the hut was empty but for our two selves; that it must have been absolutely empty till we entered. - 1898 July 18, The Leader, Melbourne, page 34, column 1:
  2. Myself, oneself.
    • I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.

Forms

selves selfe silf silfe

Verb

  1. To fertilize by the same individual; to self-fertilize or self-pollinate.
  2. To fertilize by the same strain; to inbreed.

Forms

selfs selfing selfed selfe silf silfe

Antonyms

outcross