selves

Related to selves: ostial, fluctuant, self-willed, schizonticide, dyssynergy

a shadow of (one's) former self

Someone or something that has changed dramatically to become decreased in vivacity in some way, often following negative circumstances or some traumatic event. Ever since Tim was in that accident, he's been a shadow of his former self. She's so quiet now, like a shadow of her former self. Does anyone know what happened to the bubbly girl we once knew? Many of the town's residents moved away, leaving it a shadow of its former self.
See also: former, of, shadow

a shadow of (one's) old self

Someone or something that has changed dramatically to become decreased in vivacity in some way, often following negative circumstances or some traumatic event. Tom's been nothing but a shadow of his old self since that accident, his bubbly, outgoing persona replaced by gloom and seriousness. The mass emigration of workers from the country during the recession has left it a mere shadow of its old self.
See also: of, old, shadow

be a ghost of (someone's or something's) former self

To be weaker or inferior in comparison to how someone or something was previously, often due to negative circumstances. After suffering from a prolonged illness, Sharon was a ghost of her former self. This town is a ghost of its former self after so many of its residents have moved away.
See also: former, ghost, of

be a shadow of (someone's or something's) former self

To be weaker or inferior in comparison to how someone or something was previously, often due to negative circumstances. After suffering from a prolonged illness, Sharon was a shadow of her former self. This town is a shadow of its former self after so many of its residents have moved away.
See also: former, of, shadow

become a shadow of (someone's or something's) former self

To become weaker or inferior in comparison to how someone or something was previously, often due to negative circumstances. Suffering from a prolonged illness caused Sharon to become a shadow of her former self. This town became a shadow of its former self after so many local businesses closed down.
See also: become, former, of, shadow
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • a shadow of (one's) former self
  • a shadow of (one's) old self
  • a shadow of (oneself)
  • a shadow of your former self
  • former
  • shadow of one's self
  • shadow of oneself
  • became
  • become a shadow of (someone's or something's) former self
  • be a ghost of (someone's or something's) former self
References in periodicals archive
Infection and inflammation cross the bridge between selves in the opposite direction.
First self
Invisible Man is more aware of "that progress goo" that a transcendental history requires, and hence the possibility of teleological movement and linear temporality is challenged: "Not only could you travel upward toward success but you could travel downward as well; up and down, in retreat as well as in advance, crabways and crosswa ys and around in a circle, meeting your old selves coming and going and perhaps all at the same time." This "shattering" of his knowledge systems produces in part a realization of the immense possibility involved in being able to change his "name and never [be] challenged even once" (510).
Plunging (outside of) history: naming and self-possession in Invisible Man
They analyzed patterns of brain damage in 29 previously published cases of disordered selves. Injury to the frontal region of the right hemisphere occurred in 28 people, compared with left-frontal damage in 14.
Self-serve brains: personal identity veers to the right hemisphere
However, as Michael Schoenfeldt's Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England makes clear, it is still quite possible to say important and original things about both bodies and selves, and about the ways in which early modern writers imagined each in terms of the other.
Bodies and Selves in Early Modern England: Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton. (Reviews)
To Powers, the central conflict in James is that between perceptive artists and their conventional surroundings, and the artists' goal is to remain true to themselves, to admit honestly their faults and limitations, and to come to a compromise with their surroundings without giving up their "essential" selves. The result is a redemptive vision of utopian social transformation through artistic self-acceptance.
"I'm not the boy you want": sexuality, "race," and thwarted revolution in Baldwin's 'Another Country.'
Guernsey uses this observation to argue against Stephen Greenblatt and others who can f ind only socially constructed selves in the Renaissance, only what amount to Winnicottian "false selves." For Guernsey, Herbert's poetry reveals that the development of a mature "true self" was possible then despite often unfavorable circumstances.
The Pulse of Praise: Form as Second Self in the Poetry of George Herbert & Writing the Flesh: The Herbert Family Dialogue
"The Afro-American Woman's Emerging Selves." Journal of Black Psychology 13.1 (1986): 1-11.
Self-delusion and self-sacrifice in Nella Larsen's 'Quicksand.'
On Gay's own introductory say-so, its purview encompasses self-consciousness, the self's concern with other selves, "the way the self perceives, and responds to, the world" (p.
The Naked Heart: The Bourgeois Experience from Victoria to Freud