selfhood
Americannoun
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philosophy
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the state of having a distinct identity
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the individuality so possessed
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a person's character
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the quality of being egocentric
Etymology
Origin of selfhood
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.
Huntsinger hopes audiences won’t overlook Arthur Harari’s “The Unknown,” an uncanny body-swapping drama starring Léa Seydoux that uses its genre premise to explore questions of identity and selfhood.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 3, 2026
As she did in the novel “No One Is Talking About This,” Ms. Lockwood deploys a wildly comic voice to explore big questions about suffering and selfhood.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2025
In the face of so much frenzied curation and compulsory personal branding, how might a modern human maintain some iota of unshared selfhood, a soupçon of Greta Garbo mystique?
From New York Times ● Mar. 9, 2024
And if she did slip in that fraught moment, the whole edifice of her selfhood, her life’s grand project, might well collapse.
From Slate ● Feb. 10, 2024
We catch this young girl at the dawn of her selfhood.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
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.
