selfish
adjective
Simple meaning
Having excessive or exclusive regard and concern for one's own feeling good, profit or pleasure.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
sehlfishSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈsɛlfɪʃ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.
Having excessive or exclusive regard and concern for one's own well-being, profit or pleasure, with little or no consideration for others.
video games
Of video game characters: relying on their own actions and capabilities to be effective in the game, rather than on other characters.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- C1 · Advanced
- Frequency
- Moderately Common
- Typical Use
- Neutral / general English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Having excessive or exclusive regard and concern for one's own well-being, profit or pleasure, with little or no consideration for others.
Used this way, selfish is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use selfish
- “Selfish men were...trying to make capital for themselves out of the sacred cause of civil rights"- Maria Weston Chapman.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A person who is unusually selfish.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Antonyms
Sense: holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.