SELF-HELP • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Self-help

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/sˈɛlfhˈɛlp/ Listen

noun

Self-help n.

The act of aiding one's self, without depending on the aid of others.

(Law) The right or fact of redressing or preventing wrongs by one's own action without recourse to legal proceedings, as in self-defense, distress, abatement of a nuisance, etc.

Developing one's capabilities or solving one's own problems, especially psychological problems, without the assistance of a professional, by independent study or by association with other individuals having similar interests.

adjective

Self-help adj. Of, pertaining to, or useful for the process of developing one's capabilities or solving one's problems; as, self-help books on writing for profit.

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Etymology of 'Self-help'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Self-help" Quotes from Famous Books

... first, capabilities that might be turned to endless uses; in the conscript drawn from the populace of the provinces there was almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some trade, coupled with habits of diligence; in the soldier made from the street Arab of Paris there were always inconceivable intelligence, rapidity of wit, and plastic vivacity; ...

— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... the wealth they must combine to produce—means, in short, the practical application of Christianity to life, and has in it the secret of an orderly and benign reconstruction. State Socialism would cut off the very roots in personal character—self-help, forethought, and frugality—which nourish and sustain the trunk and ...

— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... the torpidity of paternally governed ones, do not suffice him, he may read Mr. Laing's[47] successive volumes of European travel, and there study the contrast in detail. What, now, is the cause of this contrast? In the order of nature, a capacity for self-help must in every case have been brought into existence by the practise of self-help; and, other things equal, a lack of this capacity must in every case have arisen from the lack of demand for it. Do not these two antecedents and their two consequents agree ...

— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)--Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various

... was so unlike the first volume as to seem no continuation of her own life. It began one summer morning about two years after the close of the war—an interval which she had spent in various efforts at self-help, ...

— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen

... may have the power of self-help and self-care, industries are introduced. In that the people are being fitted to save themselves. All of our work from first to last is missionary, and instinct with the motive of salvation; our schools are means to an end; fitting preachers, teachers, mechanics, home ...

— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

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