self
Part of speech: pron
noun
verb
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: biology
botany
business
commerce
commercial
immunology
medicine
natural-sciences
sciences
Etymology: 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”).
Inflected forms:
form: selves
pos: pron
tags: plural
form: selfe
pos: pron
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silf
pos: pron
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silfe
pos: pron
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: selves
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: selfs
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: selfe
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silf
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silfe
pos: noun
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: selfs
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: selfing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: selfed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: selfed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: selfe
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silf
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silfe
pos: verb
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: selfe
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silf
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
form: silfe
pos: adj
tags: alternative
obsolete
Senses:
gloss: Himself, herself, itself, themself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).
pos: pron
tags: obsolete
rare
examples: 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.
gloss: Myself, oneself.
pos: pron
tags: humorous
examples: I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.
gloss: One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
pos: noun
examples: Portia:
To these injunctions every one doth swear
That comes to hazard for my worthless self.
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.
gloss: An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: Self-interest or personal advantage.
pos: noun
gloss: A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
pos: noun
gloss: A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
pos: noun
gloss: 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).
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: To fertilize by the same individual; to self-fertilize or self-pollinate.
pos: verb
gloss: To fertilize by the same strain; to inbreed.
pos: verb
gloss: Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed.
pos: adj
examples: a self bow: one made from a single piece of wood
a self flower or plant: one which is wholly of one colour
gloss: Same, identical.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
examples: 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, / Or bring your latter hazard back again, / And thankfully rest debtor for the first.
I am made of that self mettle as my sister.
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 […]
At that self moment enters Palamon / The gate of Venus […]
gloss: Belonging to oneself; own.
pos: adj
tags: obsolete
gloss: 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).
pos: adj
examples: 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.
Synonyms: cyberself
herself
himself
itself
myself
non-self
oneself
one's self
ourselves
technoself
themselves
thyself
yourself
yourselves
Antonyms: nonself
outcross
Related words: self-
person
I
ego
Derived words: 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
selfist
selfless
selflike
selfline
selfly
selfname
selfness
selfsame
selfsameness
selfship
selfsome
selfward
selfwards
selfy
selvage
selving
shadow of one's former self
subself
superself
underself
unself
selfbow
Translations: