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Definition of "self-command" [self•-com•mand]

  • Full presence of mind; self-confidence. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "self-command" in a sentence
  • "David Ramsay, a South Carolina delegate to the Continental Congress, warned that “the temptations to drunkenness are so great and so common, as partly resulting from the climate, that great self-command, prudence and fortitude, and a strict discipline of the passions and appetites, are absolutely necessary to maintain the empire of reason over sense.”"
  • "The intimate contest for self-command can apply to pleasures as well, and for similar reasons."
  • "Behavioral economists, whose work combines the techniques and ideas of economics and psychology, have long focused on what Thomas Schelling, the 2005 Nobel laureate, called the “intimate contest for self-command” — the all-too-familiar inner conflict between the would-be disciplined self who wants to get up early, exercise, and lose weight and the pleasure-seeking self who prefers to sleep in, watch TV, and eat chocolate."