Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Aware of oneself as an individual or of one's own being, actions, or thoughts.
- adj. Socially ill at ease: The self-conscious teenager sat alone during lunch.
- adj. Excessively conscious of one's appearance or manner: The self-conscious actor kept fixing his hair.
- adj. Showing the effects of self-consciousness; stilted: self-conscious prose.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Aware of one's self; having self-consciousness.
- Conscious of one's self as an object of observation to others; apt to think of how one appears to others.
Wiktionary
- adj. aware of oneself as an individual being
- adj. uncomfortably over-conscious of one's appearance or behaviour
- adj. ill at ease socially
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Conscious of one's acts or state as belonging to, or originating in, one's self.
- adj. Conscious of one's self as an object of the observation of others.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. aware of yourself as an individual or of your own being and actions and thoughts
- adj. excessively and uncomfortably conscious of your appearance or behavior
Etymologies
- self- + conscious (Wiktionary)
Examples
“And though I don’t believe in the idea of self-conscious secrets in any Chinatown, I hope the stories collected in this volume serve to open up a newly expanded view into these neighborhoods as revealed by multiple generations of residents.”
“The purpose behind the creation of Andrea was not to create a self-conscious being, but create a program that could give the illusion of consciousness.”
“The dread I felt stemmed directly from the knowledge that the Shrek sequels took everything good about the first film, and trashed them with ham-handed comedy, self-conscious star voices, and a surfeit of pop culture references.”
The Huffington Post: Dan Persons: The Sublime Syncretism of Kung Fu Panda 2
“The film is stylistically self-conscious, almost to a fault, and almost unmanageably ambitious.”
The Wall Street Journal: Surprise: A Newly Exhilarating 'X-Men'
“Dropping the Lord's Prayer seemed reasonable, although some other accommodations have been self-conscious and clumsy, like calling Hallowe'en "Black and Orange Day.”
“Her hair lay flat against her neck, and when she spoke, you could tell she was self-conscious about her overbite.”
“This gave the researchers a chance to gather information about the social dynamics without making the children too self-conscious or aware of the purpose of the program.”
“I was self-conscious to be onstage and showing, but the crowd was warm and receptive.”
“It all feels a little too much like you're giving someone an audience for my liking, which always makes me worry about coming across as an arse, which in turn makes me all self-conscious and babbling, which makes me worry if I sound all patronising if I'm interested in the person on the other side of the table and .... argh!”
“Maddy Cohan always managed to make him self-conscious, causing him to premeditate every reaction to her, even simple gestures of greeting.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘self-conscious’.
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Introverted
Quiet, shy, Introverted, reserved, isolated, mysterious
abashed, alienated, alone, anonymous, antisocial, ascetic, asocial, austere, autonomous, awkward, bashful, clannish and 91 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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Bram Stoker's Dracula
Words used in Bram Stoker's Dracula.
decadence, emancipation, nostalgia, abounded, modernity, revolution, famine, conservative, privy, vied, nascent, correspondence and 211 more...
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Words found in books
Interesting, memorable and uncommon words found in works of fiction
squire, ponce, slapstick, scoff, merriment, brethren, gormless, tantalizing, jostle, cumulo-nimbus, sequin, dejectedly and 36 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for self-conscious.
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