SELF-INTEREST

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-interest mean? 

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

1. taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others

2. concern for your own interests and welfare

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-INTEREST (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Taking advantage of opportunities without regard for the consequences for others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

expedience; opportunism; self-interest; self-seeking

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

selfishness (stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Concern for your own interests and welfare

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

egocentrism; egoism; self-centeredness; self-concern; self-interest

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

trait (a distinguishing feature of your personal nature)

 Context examples 

Could not even self-interest make you wiser?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The god Ea manipulates language and misleads people into doing his will because it serves his self-interest.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

If she had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that he, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

Elinor was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore at an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for nothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other less than they had done before; and Elinor sat down to the card table with the melancholy persuasion that Edward was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere affection on HER side would have given, for self-interest alone could induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so thoroughly aware that he was weary.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Dr Martin Worthington’s new research analysing the word play in the story has uncovered the duplicitous language of a Babylonian god called Ea, who was motivated by self-interest.

(‘Trickster god’ used fake news in Babylonian Noah story, University of Cambridge)

The whole of Lucy's behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)