self-destroying
Definition
- Adjective:
- Tending to cause one's own destruction or ruin: "self-destroying" describes something that leads to its own end or harm, often through inherent flaws or actions.
- Self-defeating in nature: It can refer to behaviors, systems, or mechanisms that inherently work against their own success or survival.
Usage Examples
- (The policy caused its own failure.)
- (Habits that harm oneself.)
- (A mechanism that destroys itself.)
Advanced Usage
- "self-destroying prophecy": a prediction that causes itself to come true by creating the conditions for its own fulfillment, often negatively.
- The belief that the project would fail became a self-destroying prophecy when team members stopped trying. (The belief caused the failure.)
- "self-destroying mechanism": a system or process that automatically leads to its own termination.
- The rocket had a self-destroying mechanism in case of a malfunction. (A device that destroys the rocket.)
Variants and Related Words
- Self-destruction (n): the act of destroying oneself or itself.
- The character's self-destruction was tragic to witness. (His own ruin.)
- Self-destructive (adj): having the tendency to cause harm to oneself.
- Self-destructive behavior often stems from low self-esteem. (Harmful to oneself.)
Synonyms
- Self-defeating: causing or resulting in one's own failure or harm.
- Suicidal: likely to lead to one's own death or ruin (often used figuratively).
- Autolytic: relating to the breakdown of cells by their own enzymes (technical/biological).
Related Idioms
- To shoot oneself in the foot: to harm one's own interests through a foolish action.
- By refusing to negotiate, the leader shot himself in the foot with a self-destroying attitude. (He harmed his own cause.)
- To cut off one's nose to spite one's face: to act in a way that harms oneself in order to harm someone else.
- His decision to quit in anger was a self-destroying move that only hurt his career. (He harmed himself out of spite.)