Alternative forms

• selfe, silf, silfe (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#SELFCategory:English terms derived from Middle English#SELF salve, self, silf, from Old EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Old English#SELFCategory:English terms derived from Old English#SELF self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-GermanicCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#SELFCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Germanic#SELF *selbaz, from Proto-Indo-EuropeanCategory:English terms inherited from Proto-Indo-European#SELFCategory:English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European#SELF *selbʰ- (“one's own”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛlf/Category:English 1-syllable words#SELFCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF
• (Southern US, African-American Vernacular, dated) IPA^(key): /ˈsɛf/^[1]Category:English 1-syllable words#SELFCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF
• (Northumbria) IPA^(key): /ˈsɛl/Category:English 1-syllable words#SELFCategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF

• Audio (US):

  (file)

  Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#SELF
• Rhymes: -ɛlfCategory:Rhymes:English/ɛlf#SELFCategory:Rhymes:English/ɛlf/1 syllable#SELF
• Hyphenation: self

Pronoun

self (plural selves)Category:English lemmas#SELFCategory:English pronouns#SELFCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. (obsoleteCategory:English terms with obsolete senses#SELF or rareCategory:English terms with rare senses#SELF) Himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).

   This argument was put forward by the defendant self.Category:English terms with usage examples#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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

2. (commercial or humorousCategory:English humorous terms#SELF) Myself, oneself.

   I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.Category:English terms with usage examples#SELF

Noun

self (plural selves or selfs)Category:English lemmas#SELFCategory:English nouns#SELFCategory:English countable nouns#SELFCategory:English nouns with irregular plurals#SELFCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

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

   She remained her usual cheerful self despite recent setbacksCategory:English terms with usage examples#SELF

   • 2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Ch.1, at p.7:

     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 bit-by-bit product of experience and education: we are what we become - or, in Wordworth's later phrase, the child is the father of the man. Particular parents, surroundings and stimuli produce individuated selves. Identity is thus unique because contingent, the cumulative product of ceaseless occurrences.

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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

3. An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
   • a. 1857, William Hamilton, “Lecture IX”, in H[enry] L[ongueville] Mansel and John Veitch, editors, Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic […], volume (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, published 1859–1860, →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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
5. (botanyCategory:en:Botany#SELF) A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
6. (botanyCategory:en:Botany#SELF) A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
8. (molecular biologyCategory:en:Molecular biology#SELF, immunologyCategory:en:Immunology#SELF) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

Verb

self (third-person singular simple present selfs, present participle selfing, simple past and past participle selfed)Category:English lemmas#SELFCategory:English verbs#SELFCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. (botanyCategory:en:Botany#SELF) To fertilize by the same individual; to self-fertilize or self-pollinate.
2. (botanyCategory:en:Botany#SELF) To fertilize by the same strain; to inbreed.

Adjective

selfCategory:English lemmas#SELFCategory:English adjectives#SELFCategory:English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#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 woodCategory:English terms with usage examples#SELF

   a self flower or plant: one which is wholly of one colourCategory:English terms with usage examples#SELF

2. (obsoleteCategory:English terms with obsolete senses#SELF) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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 […]

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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 […]

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

3. (obsoleteCategory:English terms with obsolete senses#SELF) Belonging to oneself; own.
4. (molecular biologyCategory:en:Molecular biology#SELF, immunologyCategory:en:Immunology#SELF) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#SELF

References

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• FLES, LSFE, elfs

Alternative forms

• self.

Adverb

selfCategory:Danish lemmas#SELFCategory:Danish adverbs#SELFCategory:Danish entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. (Internet slangCategory:Danish internet slang#SELF) abbreviation of selvfølgelig (“of course”)Category:Danish abbreviations#SELF

Pronunciation

• Audio (France (Vosges)):

  (file)

  Category:French terms with audio pronunciation#SELF

• Audio (France):

  (file)

  Category:French terms with audio pronunciation#SELF

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

  (file)

  Category:French terms with audio pronunciation#SELF

• Audio (France (Somain)):

  (file)

  Category:French terms with audio pronunciation#SELF

Noun

self m (plural selfs)Category:French lemmas#SELFCategory:French nouns#SELFCategory:French countable nouns#SELFCategory:French entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:French masculine nouns#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. self-service restaurant or canteen.

References

• “self”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012

Etymology

From ArabicCategory:Maltese terms inherited from Arabic#SELFCategory:Maltese terms derived from Arabic#SELF سَلَف (salaf).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/Category:Maltese 1-syllable words#SELFCategory:Maltese terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF
• Rhymes: -ɛlfCategory:Rhymes:Maltese/ɛlf#SELFCategory:Rhymes:Maltese/ɛlf/1 syllable#SELF

Noun

self mCategory:Maltese lemmas#SELFCategory:Maltese nouns#SELFCategory:Maltese masculine nouns#SELFCategory:Maltese entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Maltese masculine nouns#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. loan

Alternative forms

• salve, silf, sulf

Etymology

Inherited from Old EnglishCategory:Middle English terms inherited from Old English#SELFCategory:Middle English terms derived from Old English#SELF self, from Proto-West GermanicCategory:Middle English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic#SELFCategory:Middle English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic#SELF *selb, from Proto-GermanicCategory:Middle English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#SELFCategory:Middle English terms derived from Proto-Germanic#SELF *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/, /silf/Category:Middle English terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF

Adjective

selfCategory:Middle English lemmas#SELFCategory:Middle English adjectives#SELFCategory:Middle English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

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

Pronoun

selfCategory:Middle English lemmas#SELFCategory:Middle English pronouns#SELFCategory:Middle English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

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

Noun

selfCategory:Middle English lemmas#SELFCategory:Middle English nouns#SELFCategory:Middle English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF (plural selfs)

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

Alternative forms

• seolf, sylf

Etymology

From Proto-GermanicCategory:Old English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#SELFCategory:Old English terms derived from Proto-Germanic#SELF *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /self/, [seɫf]Category:Old English terms with IPA pronunciation#SELF
• Rhymes: -elfCategory:Rhymes:Old English/elf#SELFCategory:Rhymes:Old English/elf/1 syllable#SELF

Pronoun

selfCategory:Old English lemmas#SELFCategory:Old English pronouns#SELFCategory:Old English entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#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.

     Category:Old English terms with quotations#SELF

   • 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.

     Category:Old English terms with quotations#SELF

Alternative forms

• selvo

Etymology

From Proto-GermanicCategory:Old Saxon terms inherited from Proto-Germanic#SELFCategory:Old Saxon terms derived from Proto-Germanic#SELF *selbaz.

Pronoun

selfCategory:Old Saxon lemmas#SELFCategory:Old Saxon pronouns#SELFCategory:Old Saxon entries with incorrect language header#SELFCategory:Pages with entries#SELFCategory:Pages with 7 entries#SELF

1. self