self-conscious
/ˌsɛlfˈkɒnʃəs
/adjective
1Feeling undue awareness of oneself, one’s appearance, or one’s actions: I feel a bit self-conscious parking my scruffy old car a self-conscious laugh...
- He suffered from bad acne and was self-conscious about his appearance.
- Tall and gangly, with a long nose and beady eyes, he was self-conscious about his appearance and despaired of ever being loved.
- She took virtually no exercise and was self-conscious about her appearance.
Synonyms
embarrassed, uncomfortable, ill at ease, uneasy, nervous, tense, edgy;
unnatural, inhibited, gauche, awkward, strained;
modest, shy, diffident, bashful, blushing, timorous, timid, retiring, shrinking
2(Especially of an action or intention) deliberate and with full awareness, especially affectedly so: her self-conscious identification with the upper classes...
- This ‘tailoring’ was not, we may be certain, particularly deliberate or self-conscious.
- This year's prize has a secondary purpose: as a self-conscious attempt to define, by its own indefinability, the state of British art in 2002.
- He alone supplied the deft and necessary touch of self-conscious theatrical artifice.
2.1 Philosophy & Psychology Having knowledge of one’s own existence, especially the knowledge of oneself as a conscious being: a self-conscious moral agent a self-conscious proletariat...
- Rational beings exist not only as self-conscious centres of knowledge, but also as agents.
- It is an interesting question whether any cognitively sophisticated, rational, self-conscious agent must experience situations of choice in this way.
- I think that humans are the only self-conscious moral agents.