self

Alternative forms

• (obsolete) selfe,
• (obsolete, rare) silf, silfe

Etymology

From Middle English self, silf, sulf, from Old English self, seolf, sylf, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /sɛlf/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛlf

Pronoun

self

1. (obsolete) Himself, herself, itself, themselves; that specific (person mentioned).

   This argument was put forward by the defendant self.

2. (commercial or humorous) Myself.

   I made out a cheque, payable to self, which cheered me up somewhat.

Noun

self (plural selves or selfs)

1. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
   • 1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen, OCLC 7780546; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., 55 Fifth Avenue, [1933], OCLC 2666860, 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.

2. An individual person as the object of his own reflective consciousness (plural selves).
   • Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856)

     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. B. Maxwell, chapter 16, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     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.

   • 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.

3. (botany) A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
4. (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, Ristori, G, “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 10698957, 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.

Verb

self (third-person singular simple present selfs, present participle selfing, simple past and past participle selfed)

1. (botany) To fertilise by the same individual; to self-fertilise or self-pollinate.
2. (botany) To fertilise by the same strain; to inbreed.

Adjective

self

1. Having its own or a single nature or character, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; 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. (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).
   • 2000, Ristori, G, “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 10698957, 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.

3. (obsolete) Same.
   • c.1600?, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

     But if you please
     To shoot another arrow that self way
     Which you did shoot the first […]

   • 1605, William Shakespeare, King Lear, I.i:

     I am made of that self mettle as my sister.

   • Sir Walter Raleigh, The History of the World

     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 […]

   • 1700, John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite

     At that self moment enters Palamon
     The gate of Venus […]

Further reading

• self in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• self in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• Self in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

Anagrams

• FLES, LSFE, elfs

Alternative forms

• self.

Adverb

self

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

Noun

self

1. loan

Alternative forms

• silf, sulf

Etymology

From Old English self, from Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɛlf/

Adjective

self

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

Pronoun

self

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

Noun

self (plural selfs)

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

Alternative forms

• seolf, sylf

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *selbaz. Anglian Smoothing from older seolf

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /self/

Pronoun

self

1. (Early West Saxon, Kent, Mercian) self

Alternative forms

• selvo

Etymology

From Proto-Germanic *selbaz.

Pronoun

self

1. self