self

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

English

Alternative forms

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”).

    Pronunciation

    • IPA(key): /ˈsɛlf/
    • (Southern US, African-American Vernacular, dated) IPA(key): /ˈsɛf/[1]
    • (Northumbria) IPA(key): /ˈsɛl/
    • Audio (US):(file)
    • Rhymes: -ɛlf
    • Hyphenation: self

    Pronoun

    self (plural selves)

    1. (obsolete or rare) Himself, herself, itself, themself, 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, oneself.
      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.
      She remained her usual cheerful self despite recent setbacks
      • 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.
      • 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).
      • 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.
      • 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. (botany) A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
    6. (botany) A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
    8. (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

    Antonyms

    Derived terms

    Descendants

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

    Translations

    See also

    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

    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.
      self-coloured
    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

    References

    1. ^ Hall, Joseph Sargent (2 March 1942), “3. The Consonants”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § 2, page 88.

    Further reading

    Anagrams

    Danish

    Alternative forms

    Adverb

    self

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

    French

    Etymology

    Pseudo-anglicism, derived from self-service.

    Pronunciation

    Noun

    self m (plural selfs)

    1. self-service restaurant or canteen.

    References

    Maltese

    Root
    s-l-f
    5 terms

    Etymology

      Inherited from Arabic سَلَف (salaf).

      Pronunciation

      • IPA(key): /sɛlf/
      • Rhymes: -ɛlf

      Noun

      self m

      1. loan

      Middle English

      Alternative forms

      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

        References

        Pronoun

        self

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

        Descendants

        References

        Noun

        self (plural selfs)

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

        References

        Old English

        Alternative forms

        Etymology

          From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

          Pronunciation

          • IPA(key): /self/, [seɫf]
          • Rhymes: -elf

          Pronoun

          self

          1. self; oneself, personally

          Declension

          Declension of self — Strong
          Singular Masculine Feminine Neuter
          Nominative self self self
          Accusative selfne selfe self
          Genitive selfes selfre selfes
          Dative selfum selfre selfum
          Instrumental selfe selfre selfe
          Plural Masculine Feminine Neuter
          Nominative selfe selfa, selfe self
          Accusative selfe selfa, selfe self
          Genitive selfra selfra selfra
          Dative selfum selfum selfum
          Instrumental selfum selfum selfum
          Declension of self — Weak
          Singular Masculine Feminine Neuter
          Nominative selfa selfe selfe
          Accusative selfan selfan selfe
          Genitive selfan selfan selfan
          Dative selfan selfan selfan
          Instrumental selfan selfan selfan
          Plural Masculine Feminine Neuter
          Nominative selfan selfan selfan
          Accusative selfan selfan selfan
          Genitive selfra, selfena selfra, selfena selfra, selfena
          Dative selfum selfum selfum
          Instrumental selfum selfum selfum

          Derived terms

          Descendants

          Old Saxon

          Alternative forms

          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

          • Middle Low German: self, sulf
            • German Low German: sülvst
            • Low German: sulv
            • Plautdietsch: selfst
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