Meaning & use
self-serving
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Meaning
adjectivecomparabledisapproving
Aimed at gaining an advantage for yourself, especially while pretending to act for a better or fairer purpose.
Grammar: Usually appears before a noun (a self-serving excuse) or after be (his speech was self-serving).
Patterns
- a self-serving excuse
- be self-serving
The manager's speech about teamwork was really just a self-serving attempt to keep his job.
Critics called the senator's new law self-serving because it helped his own family business.
It is easy to give self-serving explanations for our own mistakes.
Word forms
| comparative | more self-serving |
|---|---|
| superlative | most self-serving |
Common combinations
- self-serving motives
- The charity was accused of having self-serving motives behind its public campaign.
- a self-serving argument
- His claim that he deserved a bonus was a self-serving argument and nobody believed it.
- self-serving bias
- Psychologists call it self-serving bias when we credit success to ourselves and blame failure on luck.
- seem self-serving
- Advice from a salesperson can seem self-serving when it leads to a bigger sale.
- self-serving statement
- The company's self-serving statement ignored the complaints of its workers.
Synonyms and how they differ
- selfish
- Selfish simply describes someone who puts their own wishes first, while self-serving suggests a calculated move that is often disguised as something helpful.
- opportunistic
- Opportunistic stresses grabbing a chance as it appears, whereas self-serving focuses on who benefits from the action.
- self-interested
- Self-interested is more neutral and can describe ordinary prudence, while self-serving is clearly critical.
Opposites
Word family
- serve verb
- to work for or be useful to someone or something
- self-service adjective
- where customers help themselves, as in a self-service checkout
- self-interest noun
- concern for your own advantage
- selfishness noun
- the habit of putting your own needs before others
Commonly confused: self-serving or self-service?
self-serving vs self-service
Self-service describes a shop or machine where customers help themselves. Self-serving is a criticism of someone's motives.
Practice
Which sentence uses self-serving correctly?
Choose one answer.
Self-serving criticizes an act that mainly benefits the doer, as in expecting a park to be named after her. For a machine customers use themselves, the word is self-service.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “self-serving”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.