self-invention

noun

self-in·​ven·​tion ˌself-in-ˈven-shən 

plural self-inventions

: the act or an instance of inventing or creating one's identity or conception of oneself

her self-invention as a pop star

Bob Dylan has surpassed Walt Whitman as the defining American artist, celebrating the capacity for self-invention as the highest form of freedom.

—Cass R. Sunstein

… I've been poring online … over certain performances, interesting myself in those moments when [David] Bowie seems on the cusp of one of his celebrated self-inventions …

—Brian Dillon

Examples of self-invention in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Here, self-invention is an act of brutal violence with no discernable survivors. —Chloe Schama, Vogue, 12 Jan. 2024

Paris is a battered place of freedom, self-invention, cigarettes, and deep talk that springs from dark-eyed experience. —Bart Bull, SPIN, 20 June 2023

May, at first, is one of them, posing for (pre-smartphone) flashbulb photos and fully in tune with the theatrical self-invention that infuses the club. —Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 Feb. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1914, in the meaning defined above