self

See also: Self, šelf, self-, -self, and self.

English

Alternative forms

• (obsolete) selfe
• (obsolete, rare) silf, silfe

Etymology

From Middle English self, silf, sulf, from Old English self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz. Cognates include Gothic 𐍃𐌹𐌻𐌱𐌰 (silba), German selbst and Dutch zelf.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/
• IPA^(key): /sɛf/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛlf

Pronoun

self

1. (obsolete) Himself, herself, itself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).

   This argument was put forward by the defendant self.

   • 1898 July 18, The Leader, Melbourne, page 34, column 1:

     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.

2. (commercial or humorous) Myself.

   I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.

Noun

self (plural selves or selfs)

1. One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.

   one's true self; one's better self; one's former self

2. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ix]:

     Portia:
     To these injunctions every one doth swear
     That comes to hazard for my worthless self.

   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, →OCLC; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [1933], →OCLC, page 0056:

     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 respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

3. An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
   • 1859–1860, William Hamilton, “Lecture IX”, in H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, editors, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC:

     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 that am conscious.

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVI, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     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 dog.

4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
5. Identity or personality.
6. (botany) A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
7. (botany) A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
9. (molecular biology, immunology) 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).
   • 2000, G Ristori et al., “Compositional bias and mimicry toward the nonself proteome in immunodominant T cell epitopes of self and nonself antigens”, in FASEB Journal: the official journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, volume 14, number 3, →PMID, pages 431–438:

     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 profiles, demonstrating that self-nonself discrimination does not rely on qualitative features that distinguish human from microbial peptides. [...] Epitopes (on self and nonself antigens) can cross-stimulate T cells at increasing potency as their similarity with nonself augments.

   • 2013 May-June, Katrina G. Claw, “Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3:

     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.

Synonyms

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

 

Antonyms

• (immunology) nonself

Derived terms

• note to self
• self-abuse
• self-care
• self-centered
• self-contained
• selfdom
• selfhood
• self-hosted
• selfie
• selfish
• selfless
• selflike
• selfly
• selfness
• selfsame
• selfsameness
• selfship

 

Descendants

• → Korean: 셀프 (selpeu)
• Sranan Tongo: srefi

Translations

individual person as the object of own reflective consciousness

• Arabic: نَفْس (ar) (nafs)

  Egyptian Arabic: نفس f (nafs)

• Azerbaijani: öz (az)
• Baluchi: وت (wat)
• Belarusian: сам m (sam)
• Bengali: খোদ (bn) (khōd)
• Bikol Central: sadiri (bcl)
• Chinese:

  Cantonese: 自己 (zi⁶ gei²)

  Mandarin: 自己 (zh) (zìjǐ), (as a prefix) 自 (zh) (zì), 自我 (zh) (zìwǒ)

  Wu: 自家

• Crimean Tatar: özü
• Danish: selv (da) n
• Dutch: zelf (nl) n
• Finnish: itse (fi)
• French: soi-même (fr) m
• German: Selbst (de) n
• Greek: εαυτός (el) m (eaftós)
• Hawaiian: ponoʻī
• Hebrew: עֶצֶם (he) (étsem) (singular only)
• Hindi: खुद (hi) (khud), ख़ुद (xud), स्वयं (hi) (svayã), नफ्स (hi) (naphs), ज़ात (hi) f (zāt)
• Hungarian: önvaló (hu)
• Ido: ipsa (io)
• Indonesian: sendiri (id)
• Irish: féin
• Italian: stesso (it)
• Japanese: 自己 (ja) (じこ, jiko), 自身 (ja) (じしん, jíshin), 自我 (ja) (じが, jiga)
• Javanese: dhéwé
• Kazakh: өз (öz)
• Khakas: пос (pos)
• Korean: 자신 (ko) (jasin), 자기자신 (jagijasin)
• Kurdish:

  Central Kurdish: خۆ (xo)

  Laki: وِژ (wij)

  Northern Kurdish: xwe (ku)

  Southern Kurdish: خوە (ku) (xwe)

• Latin: idem (la)
• Latvian: patība (lv) f
• Lithuanian: pats (lt) m, pati (lt) f
• Macedonian: себство n (sebstvo)
• Manchu: ᠪᡝᠶ᠋ᡝ (beye)
• Maori: whaiaro
• Marathi: स्वतः (mr) (svataḥ)
• Norwegian: selv (no)

  Nynorsk: sjølv

• Persian: خود (fa) (xod)
• Portuguese: si-próprio m
• Russian: сам (ru) m (sam), себя́ (ru) (sebjá) (genitive case, accusative case), себе́ (ru) (sebé) (dative case, prepositional case), собо́й (ru) (sobój) (instrumental case)
• Sanskrit: स्वयं (sa) (svayaṃ), आत्मन् (sa) m (ātmán)
• Serbo-Croatian: sebstvo
• Spanish: yo m (psychology), ser m (psychology), uno mismo (es)
• Swahili: enyewe
• Swedish: själv (sv)
• Tagalog: sarili
• Thai: ตน (th) (dton), ตัวตน (dtuua-dton), อัตตา (th) (àt-dtaa)
• Tibetan: རང་ཉིད (rang nyid)
• Tocharian A: āñcäm
• Tocharian B: āñme
• Turkish: kendi (tr), öz (tr)
• Tuvan: бот (bot)
• Ukrainian: сам m (sam)
• Urdu: خود (xud)
• Vietnamese: bản thân (vi)
• Welsh: hunan (cy) m
• West Frisian: sels
• Yakut: бэйэ (beye)
• Zazaki: xo (diq), ho (diq)

See also

• self-
• person
• I
• ego

Verb

self (third-person singular simple present selfs, present participle selfing, simple past and past participle selfed)

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

Antonyms

• outcross

Adjective

self

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. (obsolete) Same, identical.
   • c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     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, / Or bring your latter hazard back again, / And thankfully rest debtor for the first.

   • c. 1603–1606, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene i]:

     I am made of that self mettle as my sister.

   • 1614, Walter Ralegh [i.e., Walter Raleigh], The Historie of the World […], London: […] William Stansby for Walter Burre, […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=1 to 5):

     But were it granted, yet the heighth of these Mountains is far under the supposed place of Paradise; and on these self Hills the Air is so thin […]

   • 1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite: Or, The Knight’s Tale. In Three Books.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:

     At that self moment enters Palamon / The gate of Venus […]

3. (obsolete) Belonging to oneself; own.
4. (molecular biology, immunology) 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).

   Antonym: nonself

   • 2000, G Ristori et al., “Compositional bias and mimicry toward the nonself proteome in immunodominant T cell epitopes of self and nonself antigens”, in FASEB Journal: the official journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, volume 14, number 3, →PMID, pages 431–438:

     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 profiles, demonstrating that self-nonself discrimination does not rely on qualitative features that distinguish human from microbial peptides. However, epitopes whose probability of mimicry with self or nonself prevails are, respectively, tolerated or immunodominant and coexist within the same (auto-)antigen regardless of its self/nonself nature. Epitopes (on self and nonself antigens) can cross-stimulate T cells at increasing potency as their similarity with nonself augments.

Derived terms

• selfbow

Further reading

• “self”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “self”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• Self in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)
• “self”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.

Anagrams

• FLES, LSFE, elfs

Danish

Alternative forms

• self.

Adverb

self

1. (Internet slang) Abbreviation of selvfølgelig (“of course”).

Maltese

Root
s-l-f
5 terms

Etymology

From Arabic سَلَف (salaf).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/

Noun

self m

1. loan

Middle English

Alternative forms

• salve, silf, sulf

Etymology

Inherited from Old English self, from Proto-West Germanic *selb, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/, /silf/

Adjective

self

1. (the) (very/self) same, (the) aforementioned
2. Intensifies the pronoun or noun it follows or precedes; very
3. (+genitive) own

Descendants

• English: self
• Scots: self, sel

References

• “self, adj., n., & pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-31.

Pronoun

self

1. themself, themselves; a reflexive pronoun
2. that, this

Descendants

• English: self (obsolete in most pronominal senses)
• Scots: self, sel
• Yola: zil, zill

References

• “self, adj., n., & pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-31.

Noun

self (plural selfs)

1. (the) same thing, (the) aforementioned thing

References

• “self, adj., n., & pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-03-31.

Old English

Alternative forms

• seolf, sylf

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /self/, [seɫf]

Pronoun

self

1. self; oneself, personally
   • late 9th century, translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History

     Sē wer meahte unēaðe þurh hine selfne ārīsan oþþe gān.

     The man could barely get up or walk by himself.

   • late 9th century, King Alfred's translation of St. Augustine's Soliloquies

     Nāt iċ nā þȳ hwā Rōme burg timbrede þe iċ hit self ġesāwe, ac for þȳ þe hit man mē sæġde.

     I don't know who built the city of Rome because I saw it myself, but because somebody told me.

Derived terms

• selflīċ

Descendants

• Middle English: self, silf, sulf
  • English: self
  • Scots: self

Old Saxon

Alternative forms

• selvo

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronoun

self

1. self

Inflection

Declension of self

	Singular			Plural
	Masculine	Neuter	Feminine
nominative	self, selfo, selfa	selfa	self	selfon
accusative	selfon, selfan	self, selfa	selfun	selfon, selfun
genitive	selfes, selfas	*selfas, *selfes	selfaru, selfaro	selfaro
dative	selfomo, selfumu, selfem	selfon	selfun, selfon	selfon
instrumental	-		-

Descendants

• Low German: sulv