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self-made

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From self- +‎ made.

Adjective

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self-made (not comparable)

  1. (of a person) Having achieved success by one's own efforts, with little to no support from family members and others.
    Synonyms: self-structured, self-formed
    Antonyms: nepotistic, cronyish
    My father was the quintessential self-made man.
    • 1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter LV, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, [], published 1853, →OCLC, page 531:
      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.
    • 2021 November 9, Max Harrison-Caldwell, quoting Peter Sokolowski, “Words Full of Sound and Fury”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
      “These were people who were self-made, and self-made people made up their own words,” Mr. Sokolowski added.
  2. (of a thing) Made by oneself instead of bought or taken over.
    Near-synonyms: homemade, homebrew, homespun, handmade

Usage notes

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Occasionally a wag will point out that a thing that one made oneself (for example, one's own packed lunch) is not self-made in the sense that "it made itself" [no, of course it didn't]. That the response to the objection is so obvious explains why the objection is usually viewed as overliteral and overpedantic; it is natural that idiom often doesn't follow overliteral logic.

Translations

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