Meaning & use
self-resilient
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivenot comparableformal
Able to recover quickly from difficulties using your own inner strength.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after a linking verb: a self-resilient team; she is self-resilient.
Patterns
- be self-resilient
- become self-resilient
- a self-resilient person
Children who are self-resilient can bounce back after a bad day at school.
The training aims to make new employees more self-resilient under pressure.
He is remarkably self-resilient; even after losing his job, he quickly found a new direction.
Common combinations
- highly self-resilient
- Nurses need to be highly self-resilient because the work is emotionally demanding.
- become more self-resilient
- Regular exercise helped her become more self-resilient during a stressful year.
- a self-resilient mindset
- A self-resilient mindset helps you treat failure as feedback rather than defeat.
Synonyms and how they differ
- resilient
- Resilient is the everyday word and does not emphasize doing it alone; self-resilient stresses relying on your own strength.
- tough
- Tough means strong and able to endure hardship, but it suggests hardness rather than the ability to recover and grow.
Opposites
Word family
- resilience noun
- The ability to recover quickly from difficulties.
- resilient adjective
- Able to recover quickly; the more common base word.
- self-reliance noun
- The ability to depend on yourself rather than on others.
Commonly confused: self-resilient or self-reliant?
self-resilient vs self-reliant
Self-reliant means you can do things for yourself without help; self-resilient means you can recover from setbacks.
Practice
The workshop teaches students to be more ______ so they can handle rejection and keep going.
Choose one answer.
Self-resilient fits because the focus is on recovering from rejection. 'Self-reliant' means doing things without help, and 'resilience' is a noun, so it cannot follow 'more' before an adjective.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “self-resilient”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.