SELF-PRESERVATION

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does self-preservation mean? 

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

1. preservation of yourself from harm; a natural or instinctive tendency

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

 Dictionary entry details 

• SELF-PRESERVATION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Preservation of yourself from harm; a natural or instinctive tendency

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

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

preservation; saving (the activity of protecting something from loss or danger)

 Context examples 

Here he was compelled to violate his instinct of self-preservation, and violate it he did, for he was becoming tame and qualifying himself for civilisation.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

But, as to the formality of taking possession in my sovereign’s name, it never came once into my thoughts; and if it had, yet, as my affairs then stood, I should perhaps, in point of prudence and self-preservation, have put it off to a better opportunity.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It covers two continents, concerns two groups of mysterious persons, and is further complicated by the highly respectable presence of our friend, Scott Eccles, whose inclusion shows me that the deceased Garcia had a scheming mind and a well-developed instinct of self-preservation.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)