Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Denying one's self; characterized by self-denial.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Refusing to gratify one's self; self-sacrificing.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Without concern for ones own advantage; selfless or self-sacrificing

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective willing to deprive yourself
  • adjective used especially of behavior

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word self-denying.

Examples

  • On the contrary, hanging out with your family, when there was all that fun to be had out in the non-stop partying, big-wide world, seemed specially inconvenient, self-denying and dull.

    For the first time in years, I'm actually looking forward to Christmas | Deborah Orr 2011

  • Under Ms. True the Getty actually developed the most self-denying acquisitions policy of any major U.S. museum.

    The Beautiful and the True Malcolm Bell 2011

  • It is perhaps little wonder that Savonarola remains such a fascinating figure, capable of being portrayed as the acme of either self-denying sanctity or philistine heresy.

    For the Love of Money Andrew McKie 2011

  • They were Americans, descended out of the English, and yet the refraining and self-denying of the English spirit-groping were not theirs.

    WHEN GOD LAUGHS 2010

  • It's certainly a mind-bending act—both narcissistic and self-denying—to assert one's identity by absorbing another's.

    Duchamp Redux Richard B. Woodward 2011

  • It isn't something I can reconcile in the future with a regeneration, because it means the Doctor is basically self-denying, therefore, he is NOT a character I admire.

    New Doctor/Rose Ficlet: STRAWBERRIES rabid1st 2009

  • And so they showed their human side, and revealed over the decades that they were not better than anyone else, not more disciplined, serious, patriotic, faithful or self-denying.

    The Captain and the King Peggy Noonan 2011

  • America is Twilight's Bella, divided eternally between soulful, self-denying Team Barack and meat-eating Team Cheney.

    John McQuaid: Not By Maureen Dowd 2010

  • This is one reason why, although he's ballooned the deficit up to an astonishing $1.4 trillion, the perpetually svelte and self-denying Dieter-in-Chief favors egg white omelets and Tofurkey over real food: he's so skeletal he can easily slip out of a tight spot.

    John McQuaid: Not By Maureen Dowd 2010

  • "This may be the single most self-denying thing that Congress has ever done," Kagan told Scalia.

    In Elena Kagan's work as solicitor general, few clues to her views 2010

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.