• IPA: /sɛlf/

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.

self (plural selves)

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

   one's true self; one's better self; one's former self

2. The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts.
   • circa 1596-97 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II scene ix:

     smallcaps 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 7780546 ↗; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], [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.

3. An individual person as the object of his 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.

4. Self-interest or personal advantage.
5. Identity or personality.
6. (botany) A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs).
7. (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#Adjective|nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).

• (immunologic sense) nonself

• French: soi-même
• German: Selbst
• Italian: stesso
• Portuguese: si-próprio
• Russian: сам

self (selfs, present participle selfing; 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.

• outcross

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.
   • circa 1596-97 William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I scene i:

     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.

   • circa 1605 William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act I scene i:

     I am made of that self mettle as my sister.

   • , 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 […]

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#Adjective|nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic).

• (immunologic sense) nonself

1. Surname