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.
Many of the new titles aren’t exactly self-explanatory.
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 11, 2025
The former England international continued: "It's not always self-explanatory, you have to have a little bit of a delve in so you can find out what the stories mean."
From BBC • Mar. 12, 2025
Long Beach officials settled on the self-explanatory “Backyard Builders Program,” hoping a partial solution to a dearth of affordable housing lies in the unused spaces of city homeowners’ property.
From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 19, 2024
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
Most old text adventure games were pretty self-explanatory, so I’d never actually bothered to read the Zork instruction manual.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Definitions 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.
