What does "self-hating" mean?

Exhibiting self-hatred; feeling hatred toward oneself.

What is a synonym for "self-hating"?

Common synonyms include: self-hateful, self-loathing.

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Adjective

1
Exhibiting self-hatred; feeling hatred toward oneself.
"When Tim Kinsella, of the pioneering indie rock groups Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc, wrote a scathingly sarcastic editorial in the emo-centric magazine Alternative Press imploring every band inside to break up, Bemis bristled at Kinsella’s cynicism, calling him a “self-hating emophobe” in a letter to the magazine."

"Any Jew who criticizes Zionism is labelled as a "self-hating Jew.""

From self- + hating. First use appears c. 1612 in the work Great Brittans Mourning Garment, of anonymous authorship.

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