self-consciousness

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The awareness of the self as an entity.

   [A]nd that one great and all-important occasion and provocative of these beliefs was actually the rise of self-consciousness — that is, the coming of the mind to a more or less distinct awareness of itself and of its own operation, and the consequent development and growth of Individualism, and of the Self-centred attitude in human thought and action.

2. 2
   noun

   Shyness; a feeling of unease in social situations.

   Adam Gopnik has, by many accounts, including his own, a lovely life. A longtime staff writer for the New Yorker and bestselling author, Gopnik lives in Manhattan with his wife, Martha, a film-maker, and their two children, and he moves in the kind of circles that allow him to drop casual lines into conversation such as: “As John Updike once said to me …”, although he has the nervy Jewish self-consciousness to follow that with “… if you’ll forgive the namedrop.”.

3. 3
   noun

   self-awareness plus the additional realization that others are similarly aware of you

4. 4
   noun

   embarrassment deriving from the feeling that others are critically aware of you

From self- + consciousness.

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