self-made

English

Adjective

self-made (not comparable)

1. Of a person, having achieved success by one's own efforts.

   My father was the quintessential self-made man.

   • 1852-1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House:

     There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like him, but self-unmade—all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my little learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for most things that I could think of.

2. Of a thing, made by oneself instead of bought or taken over.
   • 1905, Fielding Yost, Football for Player and Spectator:

     Originally each school was bound only by self-made rules.