self-consciousness

From self- +‎ consciousness.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˌsɛlfˈkɑnʃəsnəs/

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self-consciousness (uncountable)

1. The awareness of the self as an entity.
   • 1920, Edward Carpenter, Pagan and Christian Creeds, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., page 165:

     [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. Shyness; a feeling of unease in social situations.
   • 2017 December 8, Hadley Freeman, “Adam Gopnik: ‘You’re waltzing along and suddenly you’re portrayed as a monster of privilege’”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     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.”

• (shyness): shyness