selflessadj.

1651 J. Godolphin Holy Arbor To Rdr. sig. a4^v I leave this Memento with all selfless Christians.

1783 J. Knyveton Diary 2 Apr. in E. Gray Man Midwife (1946) 95 A selfless calling.

1825 S. T. Coleridge Aids Refl. 112 Holy Instincts of Maternal Love, detached and in selfless purity.

1894 Ld. Wolseley Life Marlborough II. xci. 445 The noble, selfless word ‘duty’.

1926 Slavonic Rev. 4 768 A sharp contrast between self-dramatising heroism on the one side and selfless public service on the other.

1974 J. Sochen Herstory 156 The South created a number of myths—a myth of valor, of nobility, of selfless devotion to a lost cause.

2004 Chicago Tribune (Midwest ed.) 11 Jan. xiv. 4/2 Virtually everyone in the novel is either a brave and selfless person..or a self-interested careerist.

1651 A. Crowther & T. Vincent Spiritval Conquest iii. 55 in Christian Pilgrime in his Spirituall Conflict (1652) If we thus leave our selves will-less, self-less, being-less, we sodainly become plunged into the increated being of God.

1832 S. T. Coleridge in Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. June 956 O! might Life cease! and Selfless Mind, Whose total Being is Act, alone remain behind!

1853 W. Pulsford tr. J. Müller Christian Doctr. Sin II. iii. i. ii. 49 Instead of the will being merely the self-less means [Ger. das selbstlose Mittel] for calling the natural individuality into activity, it becomes..co-determining principle of its development.

1914 Studies: Irish Q. Rev. 3 203 The facts themselves are self-less; they show no trace of human quality.

1989 R. Tong Feminist Thought i. 36 We are self-less; that is to say, our very identities are determined by our socially constituted wants and desires.

2007 New Scientist 1 Sept. 36/3 Religious feelings do seem to be quite literally self-less, which may be one of religion's biggest draws.

1872 A. Webster Auspicious Day v. ii. 215 The woman she once was, loving naught for her And all for him, selflessly.

1903 Contemp. Rev. Mar. 411 A pious priest selflessly devoted to his church.

2005 Sunday Mail (Brisbane) 9 Jan. (Inside Entertainment section) 9/1 America's firefighters—those brave souls who selflessly laid down their lives attempting to save others.

1835 Dublin Univ. Mag. Sept. 264/2 Through Coleridge's works, while they exhibit rare selflessness, it is strange that you never forget the man.

1853 C. J. Vaughan in Guardian 3 Jan. 18/2 That selflessness which God requires in His servant.

1984 R. A. F. Thurman Central Philos. Tibet 146 This understanding of personal selflessness, in terms of lack of individual, self-sufficient self, is still coarse in some respects.

2008 L. A. Pérez Cuba in Amer. Imagination iv. 197 One did indeed owe some measure of gratitude to parents for the selflessness of their dedication to child-rearing.