Meaning & use

self-reliant

adjective·Academic

Able to manage and provide for oneself without depending on help from others.

See it in a sentence

Growing up on a farm made her remarkably self-reliant from an early age.

The course teaches survival skills to help hikers become more self-reliant in the wilderness.

A note on using this word

Self-reliant emphasizes confidence in one's own abilities, while self-sufficient often focuses more on material independence, such as producing one's own food.

Words with a similar meaning

independentself-sufficient

Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.

Words with an opposite meaning

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