self
/ˈsɛlf/
Word Rarity
Common
Frequency: Zipf frequency 5.25 in modern English
7
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.
noun
The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
noun
An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
noun
noun
A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
noun
A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat."
- "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 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."
- "Portia: To these injunctions every one doth swear That comes to hazard for my worthless self."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *swé? Proto-Indo-European *selbʰ-der. Proto-Germanic *selbaz Old English self Middle English self English self 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”).