self-flagellatory

comparative more self-flagellatory · superlative most self-flagellatory

1. Characterized by self-flagellation; extremely repentant.

   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 more examples

   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

   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

2. Self-sacrificing.

   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!

   2 more examples

   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

   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

   Synonyms: self-denying, abstemious, otherish, selfless, self-abnegatory, self-denying, self-sacrificing, unselfish