SELF-DESTRUCTION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-destruction mean? 

• SELF-DESTRUCTION (noun)
  The noun SELF-DESTRUCTION has 2 senses:

1. the act of killing yourself

2. the act of destroying yourself

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-DESTRUCTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of killing yourself

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

self-annihilation; self-destruction; suicide

Context example:

it is a crime to commit suicide

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

kill; killing; putting to death (the act of terminating a life)

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

assisted suicide (suicide of a terminally ill person that involves an assistant who serves to make dying as painless and dignified as possible)

felo-de-se (an act of deliberate self destruction)

hara-kiri; harakiri; harikari; seppuku (ritual suicide by self-disembowelment on a sword; practiced by samurai in the traditional Japanese society)

suttee (the act of a Hindu widow willingly cremating herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband)

Derivation:

self-destroy; self-destruct (do away with oneself or itself)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The act of destroying yourself

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Context example:

his insistence was pure self-destruction

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

destruction; devastation (the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists)

Derivation:

self-destroy; self-destruct (do away with oneself or itself)

 Context examples 

Had I died,—it would have been self-destruction.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)