selfconfessed

Self-confessed is an English adjective used to indicate that a statement, quality, or action has been admitted by the person themselves rather than reported by others. It signals that the admission comes directly from the individual and can describe a characteristic, fault, or activity that the person has publicly acknowledged. The term can be used before a noun, as in “a self-confessed optimist” or “a self-confessed criminal,” or predicatively, as in “He is a self-confessed liar.”

The form is typically hyphenated, combining self with confessed to produce a single descriptive unit. In most modern style guides, the hyphenated variant is preferred, especially when used attributively before a noun. Some older American texts or less formal writing may appear with no hyphen (self confessed), but the hyphenated form is more standard in contemporary usage.

Use of self-confessed emphasizes the subject’s own admission and can influence how readers interpret the claim. It does not, by itself, establish truth or legality; it simply records that the person has acknowledged the matter themselves. In journalism and biographical writing, the phrase helps convey voluntary or retrospective admissions without implying endorsement or proof.

Related terms include self-admitted and confessional language such as confession or confessed. The expression appears across encyclopedic, journalistic, and biographical prose as a concise way to attribute admissions to the source.