Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-possessed \Self"-pos*sessed"\, a. Composed or tranquil in mind, manner, etc.; undisturbed.
Wiktionary
a. in full control of one's faculties, and having a firm belief in one's abilities; confident, assured and poised
WordNet
adj. in full control of your faculties; "the witness remained collected throughout the cross-examination"; "perfectly poised and sure of himself"; "more self-contained and more dependable than many of the early frontiersmen"; "strong and self-possessed in the face of trouble" [syn: collected, equanimous, poised, self-collected, self-contained]
Usage examples of "self-possessed".
Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly in England, was a tall, grave girl, with a self-possessed manner, a wide, white forehead, a wealth of rich brown hair, and blue eyes.
Among those whom the Tailles had brought was a cousin of a certain age, a Monsieur Sauvetanin, a man given to philosophical reflections, serious, and always very self-possessed, and Madame Lamondois, an old aunt.
Kirk noticed, though, that she appeared as self-possessed and collected now as when she had entered the simulator, unlike most of the other trainees, who came out sweating and unkempt.
She was twelve years older, a lot less the gamin, classy and self-possessed now, but it was Kate nonetheless.
From what you say, Arrhae ir-Mnaeha is a most self-possessed young woman.
He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self-possessed old gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that probably belonged there.
He was very calm, this man, Lyla noticed, very self-possessed, not in the least disturbed by what he could now see of the street, regardless of the fact that it must have undergone tremendous changes since he was last in the city: the blast-proof shields over the store windows, the two-foot-high police barricades isothe fire-and-riot lane in the center of the roadthe sunken gun-posts at the nearby intersections, the heavy concrete blast-walls exactly the length of a prowl car set at two-block intervals and designed to save official vehicles from being crushed if a building was demolished and spilled across the street.
Pecksniff, knocking down another penny, 'perfectly self-possessed.
A self-possessed young person, clearly, and not impressed by Urky's noisy, lickerish gallantry.
Their passion had deserted them, and, by the kind of dances as well as by their execution, they recalled rather the calm and self-possessed nauch girls of India than the impassioned dancers of Egypt.
He whirled to the telephone circuit to which the Corrections officer still clung, the minute break having given Othman just time enough to collect himself and to assume a cool and self-possessed mien.