The Collaborative International Dictionary
Self-sufficiency \Self`-suf*fi"cien*cy\, n. The quality or state of being self-sufficient.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1620s, originally an attribute of God (translating Greek autakreia), from self- + sufficiency. Of mortals, self-sufficient "able to supply one's own needs" is recorded from 1580s.
Wiktionary
n. The condition of being self-sufficient.
WordNet
n. personal independence [syn: autonomy, self-direction, self-reliance]
Wikipedia
Self-sufficiency (also called self-containment) is the state of not requiring any aid, support, or interaction, for survival; it is therefore a type of personal or collective autonomy. On a national scale, a totally self-sufficient economy that does not trade with the outside world is called an autarky.
The term self-sufficiency is usually applied to varieties of sustainable living in which nothing is consumed outside of what is produced by the self-sufficient individuals. Examples of attempts at self-sufficiency in North America include simple living, homesteading, off-the-grid, survivalism, DIY ethic and the back-to-the-land movement.
Practices that enable or aid self-sufficiency include autonomous building, permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and renewable energy. The term is also applied to limited forms of self-sufficiency, for example growing one's own food or becoming economically independent of state subsidies. The self-sufficiency of an electrical installation measures its degree of grid independence and is defined as the ratio between the amount of locally produced energy that is locally consumed (either directly or after storage) and the total consumption.
Usage examples of "self-sufficiency".
He had no pride, self-sufficiency, nor tone of superiority--in fact, none of those defects which are often the reproach of the learned and the witty.
The doctor, a tall fine man, polite, eloquent without being a conversationalist, a learned physician, a man of wit, a favourite pupil of Boerhaeve, without scientific jargon, or charlatanism, or self-sufficiency, enchanted me.
But Bangladesh in fact offers the prospect of agricultural self-sufficiency.
Besides, he had in the past won two self-sufficiency awards from the British Darts Organization darts bursaries, darts scholarships, as it were, to help him in his bid to go pro.
Besides, he had in the past won two self-sufficiency awards from the British Darts Organization — darts bursaries, darts scholarships, as it were, to help him in his bid to go pro.
The self-sufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellowcreatures given by the dogmatists who have "gone back," as the vulgar phrase is, on their race, their own flesh and blood.
We haven't even got a word for the quality I mean--for the self-sufficiency of man's spirit.