1884 G. Meredith Diana of Crossways vii, in Fortnightly Rev. July 124 A convent and self-quenching;—cloisters would seem to me like holy dew.

1887 Trans. Canad. Soc. Civil Engineers 1 i. 75 Self-quenching arrangements [sc. for drowning the fire] cannot be depended upon if left disused, say, for twelve months.

1914 Electrician 9 Jan. 569/1 A few preliminary experiments..encouraged the hope that, with a generator characterised by better self-quenching properties,..successful telephony might be accomplished.

1939 Brit. Patent 509,820 9/2 A suitably adjusted super-reaction circuit arrangement, with self-quenching provides a satisfactory solution..by the use of one vacuum tube only.

1959 F. W. Wilson Tool Engineer's Handbk. (ed. 2) xv. 27 With extremely rapid heating rates and shallow heating, the mass of the part may conduct heat away fast enough to quench the part suitably. This is termed ‘self-quenching’.

1970 D. L. Horrocks in E. D. Bransome Liquid Scintillation Counting 36/2 Self-quenching seems to occur in molecules that have unprotected, coplanar chromophores so that there can be a complete mirror image overlap of the chromophores of the excited and unexcited solute molecules.

2010 E. McCafferty Introd. Corrosion Sci. xvi. 505 In laser surface melting, a laser beam melts a thin surface layer and the underlying bulk metal provides self-quenching.

1912 Amer. Gas Light Jrnl. 29 July 75/1 He draws the coke into a self-quenching coke chute.

1932 Admiralty Handbk. Wireless Telegr. 1931 xvi. 727 Receivers in which..self-oscillations alternately build up and are damped out without the necessity of a separate circuit to vary the reaction. These are called self-quenching receivers or squeggers.

1963 B. Fozard Instrumentation Nucl. Reactors v. 51 If bromine..is added to the neon-argon mixture, satisfactory operation as a self-quenching counter is achieved.

1985 Jrnl. Cell Biol. 101 588/1 We have used a fluorescent dye, calcein, for this purpose. It is a water-soluble and self-quenching dye.

1999 C. Richard & G. Grabner in P. Boule Environmental Photochem. viii. 220 A possible fast self-quenching reaction of singlet oxygen was invoked to explain this result.

2005 R. K. Eckhoff Explosion Hazards in Process Industries iii. 166 Mists of flammable liquids in air can propagate flames... Spray/mists of chlorinated liquid compounds, however, can be self-quenching.