Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Being the very same; identical.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- The very same; identical.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Precisely the same; the very same; identical.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. being the exact same one; not any other:
Etymologies
- From Middle English selfsame, from earlier selve same, equivalent to self + same or self- + same. Compare Old High German selbsama ("selfsame, identical"), Danish selvsamme ("selfsame, identical"), English selfsome. More at self, same. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Page 109: The term selfsame occurs only once without a hyphen.”
The Heroic Enthusiasts (Gli Eroici Furori) Part the Second An Ethical Poem
“These selfsame strategies are used by the bacteria in their struggle to defeat our best antibiotics.”
“She went to her death in the name of the selfsame god your royal father sought to placate with her blood.”
Simon & Schuster: Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer
“As luck would have it, Champneys' PR adviser was the selfsame Mr Wallis.”
The Guardian: Sir Paul Stephenson's resignation: Sir Paul's Parthian shot | Editorial
“There is further the case in which a writer, when relating something about a person, suddenly breaks off and converts himself into that selfsame person.”
“It is a great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into the selfsame feeling and sensation.”
“Old lines about knights at table in the great banquet halls, and of those above the salt and below the salt, and of Vikings feasting fresh from sea and ripe for battle, came to me; and I knew that the old times were not dead and that we belonged to that selfsame ancient breed.”
“But these are the selfsame people who every day for the last six months have been reading about the president's semen on this young girl's dress.”
Alice Walker: On Finding Your Bliss Interview by Evelyn C. White
“Best of all was the selfsame Evil CIA Lady's withering "You're the best England's got?" followed by Gwen's right hook as she points out: "I'm Welsh.”
“Many of the current tea partiers were recipients of this selfsame instruction.”
The Wall Street Journal: Tea Party Embodies Something Real and Deeply Felt
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘selfsame’.
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RELI - Genesis
Protagonists and relevant words in the Book of Creation (Source: King James Bible)
Laban, circumcise, beget, Esau, Rebekah, speckle, Sodom, Pharaoh, Canaanite, Canaan, Jacob, Lot and 1286 more...
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addendumb's Words
fey, cockshut, redact, beatific, melange, arcanum, rarefied, dissemble, capitulation, detritus, ennui, anodyne and 381 more...
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billy shakespeare's guide to good living
hurlyburly, nave, direful, whence, sooth, dwindle, tempest-tost, withal, selfsame, wrack, unfix, recompense and 142 more...
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vmarinelli's Words
canard, gumption, inexorable, insouciance, inviolable, mordant, euphonious, sawbuck, carpe diem, pay dirt, adipocere, profligate and 496 more...
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Words next
patrimony, cacophony, fearsome, coruscating, coruscating, coruscating, dolomite, dolorous, transdermal, chatty cathy, chatterbox, incessantly and 249 more...
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miscellanea
antimacassar, snootful, sessile, glagolitic, marrowsky, farrago, keel, calumny, rheum, talisman, tally, awry and 508 more...
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Contact!
Words for the guessing game of Contact, which is remarkably effective at killing time when you're with 2 or more people. The game is similar to Botticelli.
totemic, fungible, solipsism, copacetic, adamantine, pessary, vivisect, postlapsarian, doggerel, waif, stentorian, zoetrope and 67 more...
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Hated
Bad words.
Tweets
Looking for tweets for selfsame.

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