Dictionary

self-flagellatory en · ADJ

Meanings

1. Characterized by self-flagellation; extremely repentant.
   • I spent a good deal of time on it, wrote her a full response and delivered it back – and then heard nothing more for a few weeks, until I had a self-flagellatory letter from her which concentrated entirely on my negative points rather than my positives. 2011, Alison Baverstock, The Naked Author - A Guide to Self-publishing:
   • There is often a muted mea culpa in these semi-autobiographical musings, a self-flagellatory tone that immediately relieves the reader of any suspicions of romanticism or nostalgia about a bygone age and a lost youth. 2007, Dimitrios I. Roussopoulos, The New Left: Legacy and Continuity, page 15:
   • In this sense, the currently fashionable self-flagellatory school of history is, at the very least, as arrogant and self-centered as the more traditional kind of self-serving history. 2005, Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, page 386:
2. Self-sacrificing.
   • There is no point, except perhaps a self-flagellatory, religious one, in self-denial, and in a consumer culture, even modest consumption is an almost impossible stance. 2012, Gillian Bentley, Ruth Mace, Substitute Parents, page 182:
   • In war-time, self-sacrifice would be the obvious appropriate antidote to this depression, and some such mechanism is clearly at work in, for example, Vera Brittain's self-flagellatory dedication to her voluntary nursing, ... 1993, Franz Karl Stanzel, Martin Löschnigg, Intimate enemies, page 412:
   • Martyrs are desperate to demonstrate their self-flagellatory capabilities in the hope that someone out there actually cares. 2011, Andrew Holmes, Pains in the Office: 50 People You Absolutely, Definitely Must Avoid at Work!:

Forms

Synonyms

unselfish · otherish · self-sacrificing · self-abnegatory · self-denying · abstemious · selfless · self-flagellatory · self-denying