Meanings
- attributiveoftenUsed to convey that one has achieved success and that others should be able to as well regardless of ability, background, or circumstances.
BMWs have excellent road manners, depreciate slowly, and have an “I got mine!” cachet that buyers find hard to resist.
2010, Phil Edmonston, Lemon-Aid New Cars and Trucks 2010, page 3413 more examples
Although the Wofford quote ["We don't need affirmative action — we're already here"] may have been a well-intended attempt to demonstrate that gay people can make it, it tends to reflect an "I got mine, too bad about you" sentiment reminiscent of Clarence Thomas.
1991 December 15, Kathyrin E. Diaz, “Telling Fortune”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 22, page 7Strutting with pride over his nouveau-riche status, George [Jefferson of The Jeffersons] embodied and employed the trickle-down economic values of Reagan-era America, as well as an "I got mine," up-by-your-bootstraps ideology that was simultaneously mocked and celebrated in this version of a social sitcom.
2008, Bambi Higgins, “The Black Situation Comedy”, in Todd Boyd, editor, African Americans and Popular Culture, page 227Rand liked to call her view “objectivism” though some liken it to libertarianism. It reminds me more of an “I got mine” philosophy than of anything else. Most of us live in a world somewhere between the extremes of absolute selfishness and absolute self-abnegation.
2014, Roger Lee Ray, Progressive Faith and Practice: Thou Shalt Not Stand Idly By, unnumbered page
Cite this entry
I got mine. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/I%20got%20mine
“I got mine.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/I%20got%20mine. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “I got mine,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/I%20got%20mine.
Source: I got mine on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.