Philautia

//fɪˈlɔː.ti.ə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Self-love, self-conceit archaic, historical, rare, uncountable

    "Zwingli distinguished the origin of human sin with its Greek name, philautia. Philautia promotes the self over all others, both brother and father, neighbor and God. It is the wish for "things to be better for us than for others.""

Example

More examples

"Zwingli distinguished the origin of human sin with its Greek name, philautia. Philautia promotes the self over all others, both brother and father, neighbor and God. It is the wish for "things to be better for us than for others.""

Etymology

Loan from Greek φίλαυτοι, nominative of φίλαυτος, a compound of phil- + auto-

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.