self

pron

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

   “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.”

2. (humorous)Myself, oneself.

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

noun

1. One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition.

   “She remained her usual cheerful self despite recent setbacks”

2. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.

   “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.”

3. An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves).

   “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.”

4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
5. A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
6. A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated.
7. 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).

   “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.”

verb

1. To fertilize by the same individual; to self-fertilize or self-pollinate.
2. To fertilize by the same strain; to inbreed.

adj

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”

   “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 […]”

3. (obsolete)Belonging to oneself; own.
4. 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).

name

1. A surname.

   “Kansas has self-imposed a four-game suspension for head coach Bill Self and assistant Kurtis Townsend to begin this season along with several other sanctions, the school announced Wednesday.”

2. A freed slave surname originating as an occupation.
3. An unincorporated community in Boone County, Arkansas, United States.