SELFISHNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does selfishness mean? 

• SELFISHNESS (noun)
  The noun SELFISHNESS has 1 sense:

1. stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others

  Familiarity information: SELFISHNESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELFISHNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Hypernyms ("selfishness" is a kind of...):

stinginess (a lack of generosity; a general unwillingness to part with money)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "selfishness"):

greediness; rapaciousness; voraciousness (an excessive desire for wealth (usually in large amounts))

expedience; opportunism; self-interest; self-seeking (taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others)

Antonym:

unselfishness (the quality of not putting yourself first but being willing to give your time or money or effort etc. for others)

Derivation:

selfish (concerned chiefly or only with yourself and your advantage to the exclusion of others)

 Context examples 

The whole of his behaviour, replied Elinor, from the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Was it not ill-nature, selfishness, and a fear of exposing herself?

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

So his own selfishness frees my soul somewhat from the terrible power which he acquired over me on that dreadful night.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

“Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“No, it is not selfishness or conceit,” said he, answering, as was his wont, my thoughts rather than my words.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while my heart was poisoned with remorse.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Mr Elliot is evidently a disingenuous, artificial, worldly man, who has never had any better principle to guide him than selfishness.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification?

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Utterson ruminated awhile; he was surprised at his friend’s selfishness, and yet relieved by it.

(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)