selfish.
Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.
Meaning & usage
Holding one's own self-interest as the standard for decision making.
Having excessive or exclusive regard and concern for one's own well-being, profit or pleasure, with little or no consideration for others.
Of video game characters: relying on their own actions and capabilities to be effective in the game, rather than on other characters.
Related to or equivalent to a selfish gene; best understood as existing to preserve and replicate itself in competition with other entities at the same level of existence, rather than at the level of the individual or population containing it.
Where this word comes from
From self + -ish. Compare Danish selvisk (“selfish”), Swedish självisk (“selfish”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.