self-made man

self-made man

A man who became successful or wealthy through hard work and not by inheritance or help from others. Joe is a self-made man who worked long, hard hours to turn his small business into a large, successful company.
See also: man
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

self-made man, a

A man who has become rich and influential through his own actions, without the help of inherited wealth, powerful friends, or similar assistance. This term originated earlier but came into wide use from the nineteenth century on, when the phenomenon itself became more common. Two twentieth-century writers are among those who used it ironically. “A self-made man is one who believes in luck and sends his son to Oxford,” wrote the novelist Christina Stead (House of All Nations, 1938); and E. B. White (One Man’s Meat, 1944) wrote, “Luck is not something you can mention in the presence of self-made men.”
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer
See also:
  • self-made man, a
  • be hard at it
  • come by
  • honestly
  • hard work is not easy
  • hard to come by
  • in the end
  • not any hard feelings
  • hard by
  • knock oneself out
References in periodicals archive
He was a self-made man and was always there for us.
Philip Beresford, who compiled the first 28 rich lists for the Sunday Times, credited former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as the person responsible for encouraging the era of the self-made man and woman."Thatcher's children, the new generation of entrepreneurs, were getting going in 1989.
His relative added that the victim is a self-made man and very active in the business, real estates and contracting sectors and has his own company, which called Duqmsand.
All his predecessors from 1935 to 1961 were self-made men, or men molded in the professional image of public education, or both; a line that ended with Diosdado Macapagal, himself a self-made man. Marcos in contrast was not, nor did he see himself as a self-made man.
In The Gambler, Rempel illuminates this unknown, self-made man and his inspiring legacy as never before.
The archetypal self-made man left Cyprus penniless at the age of 16, and immigrated to America weeks after the Black Tuesday Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression.
A self-made man, Case was a compelling figure in American history.
These days Sir Philip is famous as a self-made man or, depending upon your point of view, an icon of unmitigated greed.
Chapters include "Decisions Create Environment," in which Joyce discusses how individuals can create their own destiny rather than being driven by events, and "The Myth of the Self-Made Man," in which he expounds on the tenet that people cannot achieve on their own; it takes mentors, family, and friends.
"Being a self-made man with his investments, he recognised the transformative nature of a library, what it can do for people," the library's executive director Jerry Carbone said.
He is a self-made man. Many great Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, Govinda, Jitendra, learned the dynamic art of acting from Khan.
He is a self-made man - a fact that has to be respected.
Irving Wexler, son-in-law to a rabbi with a son of his own in med school, may sound like the ideal Jewish self-made man. And, in some sense, Waxey was a self-starterin that that his reputation for stealing and racketeering caught the attention of Arnold Rothstein, who eventually asked Waxey Gordon to run his whole distillery operation.
He said Aslam, who apologised for the slip, was "a genuinely self-made man" who had come to this country from Pakistan at the age of eleven after being orphaned.