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The act of assuming, or taking to or upon one's self; the act of taking up or adopting. The assumption of authority. Whewell.

Firmness of mind; undoubting, steadiness; intrepidity; courage; confidence; self-reliance. Brave men meet danger with assurance. Knolles. Conversation with the world will give them knowledge and assurance. Locke.

[Fluellen had struck Pistol]. Shak. The very cramp-fish [i. e., torpedo] . . . being herself not benumbed, is able to astonish others. Holland.

g out, or puffed out; swelling; in a swelling manner. [Archaic] Inflated and astrut with self-conceit. Cowper.

To win the heart of; to connect by ties of love or self-interest; to attract; to fasten or bind by moral influence; -- with to; as, attached to a friend; attaching others to us by wealth or flattery. Incapable of attaching a sensible man. Miss Austen. God . . . by various ties attaches man to man. Cowper.…

sses or adorns; esp., ornamental clothing. Earth in her rich attire. Milton. I 'll put myself in poor and mean attire. Shak. Can a maid forget her ornament, or a bride her attire Jer. ii. 32.

A substitute; a proxy; an agent. [Obs.] And will have no attorney but myself. Shak.

An invisible power in a body by which it draws anything to itself; the power in nature acting mutually between bodies or ultimate particles, tending to draw them together, or to produce their cohesion or combination, and conversely resisting separation.

aracteristic. But mercy is above this sceptered away; . . . It is an attribute to God himself. Shak.

A changeling or elf child, -- that is, one left by fairies; a deformed or foolish child; a simpleton; an oaf. [Obs.] Drayton.

he future; presage. From their flight strange auguries she drew. Drayton. He resigned himself . . . with a docility that gave little augury of his future greatness. Prescott.

Self-sufficiency. [Obs.] Milton.

A combining form, with the meaning of self, one's self, one's own, itself, its own.

Poisoning caused by a virus that originates and develops in the organism itself.

A biography written by the subject of it; memoirs of one's life written by one's self.

Self-catalysis; catalysis of a substance by one of its own products, as of silver oxide by the silver formed by reduction of a small portion of it. -- Au`to*cat`a*lyt"ic (#), a.

An instrument for the instantaneous self-recording or printing of time. Knight.

A self-restoring coherer, as a microphonic detector.

Independent or self-derived power; absolute or controlling authority; supremacy. The divine will moves, not by the external impulse or inclination of objects, but determines itself by an absolute autocracy. South.

One who is self-taught; an automath.