self-explanatory
Americanadjective
adjective
Etymology
Origin of self-explanatory
First recorded in 1895–1900
Vocabulary lists containing self-explanatory
Obvious
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Obvious
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
In a 2021 interview with the Guardian, Bancroft was asked if the bowlers knew and replied: "It's pretty probably self-explanatory."
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Many of the new titles aren’t exactly self-explanatory.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 11, 2025
Look at the nameplates above the lockers at the team’s spring-training facility and Rojas’ claim becomes self-explanatory.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 11, 2025
Yet the collapse in Baltimore on Tuesday might have been avoided, some of the engineers said, if the piers were adequately equipped with blocking devices with a self-explanatory name: fenders.
From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2024
The manipulation of the appropriate mechanisms should be self-explanatory, and we need not dwell on it here.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
