Wiktionary

self

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

English

edit
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

Alternative forms

edit

Etymology

edit

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

edit

Pronoun

edit

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

edit

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

edit

Antonyms

edit

Derived terms

edit

Descendants

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

Translations

edit

See also

edit

Verb

edit

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

edit

Adjective

edit

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

edit

References

edit
  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

edit

Anagrams

edit

Danish

edit

Alternative forms

edit

Adverb

edit

self

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

French

edit

Etymology

edit

Pseudo-anglicism, derived from self-service.

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

self m (plural selfs)

  1. self-service restaurant or canteen.

References

edit

Maltese

edit
Root
s-l-f
5 terms

Etymology

edit

    Inherited from Arabic سَلَف (salaf).

    Pronunciation

    edit

    Noun

    edit

    self m

    1. loan

    Middle English

    edit

    Alternative forms

    edit

    Etymology

    edit

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

    Pronunciation

    edit

    Adjective

    edit

    self

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

    Descendants

    edit

    References

    edit

    Pronoun

    edit

    self

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

    Descendants

    edit

    References

    edit

    Noun

    edit

    self (plural selfs)

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

    References

    edit

    Old English

    edit

    Alternative forms

    edit

    Etymology

    edit

      From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

      Pronunciation

      edit

      Pronoun

      edit

      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.

      Declension

      edit
      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

      edit

      Descendants

      edit

      Old Saxon

      edit

      Alternative forms

      edit

      Etymology

      edit

      From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

      Pronoun

      edit

      self

      1. self

      Inflection

      edit
      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

      edit
      Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=self&oldid=91128176"