Self-made

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Having achieved success by one's own efforts, with little to no support from family members and others. not-comparable

    "My father was the quintessential self-made man."

  2. 2
    Made by oneself instead of bought or taken over. not-comparable

    "Near-synonyms: homemade, homebrew, homespun, handmade; see also Thesaurus:custom-made"

Adjective
  1. 1
    having achieved success or recognition by your own efforts wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
custom-madehandmadehomebrewhomemadehomespunmade-to-measure

Example

More examples

"President Lincoln was what we call a self-made man."

Etymology

From self- + made.

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