SELF-ABSORPTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-absorption mean? 

• SELF-ABSORPTION (noun)
  The noun SELF-ABSORPTION has 1 sense:

1. preoccupation with yourself to the exclusion of everything else

  Familiarity information: SELF-ABSORPTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-ABSORPTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Preoccupation with yourself to the exclusion of everything else

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("self-absorption" is a kind of...):

preoccupation (an idea that preoccupies the mind and holds the attention)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "self-absorption"):

navel-gazing; omphaloskepsis (literally, the contemplation of one's navel, which is an idiom usually meaning complacent self-absorption)

 Context examples 

“She might almost personify Britannia,” said he, “with her complete self-absorption and general air of comfortable somnolence. Well, au revoir, Von Bork!”

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Holmes sat silently, with his head thrown back and his eyes closed, in an attitude which might seem listless to a stranger, but which I knew betokened the most intense self-absorption.

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

He knew women early and since they spoiled him he became contemptuous of them, of young virgins because they were ignorant, of the others because they were hysterical about things which in his overwhelming self-absorption he took for granted.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)