See be one's own worst enemy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
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"ref": "1861 March 29, “Reply of Rev. Mr. Haven”, in W[illia]m Lloyd Garrison, editor, The Liberator, volume XXXI, number 13 (number 1580 overall), Boston, Mass.: J[ames] B[rown] Yerrinton & Son, printers, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 51, column 3:",
"text": "[Mr. Haven] objects to our making the Liberator a free, impartial, independent journal, allowing all sides to be fairly heard (as we invariably do) in its columns. He insists on making it (what it has never been) the official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society; […] The American Anti-Slavery Society has an official organ,— […] that paper scrupulously adheres to its one object, excluding from its columns the discussion of those subjects which are so distasteful to Mr. Haven in the Liberator. That paper, therefore, cannot justly be charged with \"being its own worst enemy.\"",
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"ref": "1870, Mary Dwinell Chellis, chapter I, in Mark Dunning’s Enemy (Standard Series of Temperance Tales; III), Boston, Mass.: Henry A. Young & Co. […], →OCLC, page 27:",
"text": "\"We won't talk of that now,\" answered Mrs. Forbes. \"Mark is his own worst enemy. Good night.\" True. No enemy however powerful and malicious, can so work a man's ruin as his own unbridled passions and depraved appetites.",
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"text": "For each man is his own worst enemy, and has no foe more deadly than his own intemperance, which is sure to kill him, if the enemy be not quick.",
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"text": "So far as he could see, the girl had no screen future, though doubtless she was her own worst enemy. If someone had only taught her to be serious her career might have been worth while.",
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"ref": "2021, Henry C. Duggan, III, “Track Firestarters”, in Savannah on Fire, 1820, [United States]: Amazon Books, →ISBN, page 125:",
"text": "The Spanish arsonists have fled. […] But they are so blustery about their plans, they are their own worst enemy. Let's obtain two horses and then go into pursuit.",
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"ref": "2024 April 20, Phil McNulty, “Manchester City 1 – 0 Chelsea: Bernardo Silva Scores Late Winner as Holders Reach FA Cup Final”, in BBC Sport, archived from the original on 05 Oct 2024:",
"text": "[Mauricio] Pochettino set his team up ideally to keep City at bay but once again, as they did in that Carabao Cup final loss to Liverpool, Chelsea were their own worst enemies as they squandered opportunities to banish memories of that reverse.",
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"(intransitive, idiomatic) To act contrary to one's own interests; to cause problems for oneself; to self-sabotage."
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"word": "olla itsensä pahin vihollinen"
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"text": "[Mr. Haven] objects to our making the Liberator a free, impartial, independent journal, allowing all sides to be fairly heard (as we invariably do) in its columns. He insists on making it (what it has never been) the official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society; […] The American Anti-Slavery Society has an official organ,— […] that paper scrupulously adheres to its one object, excluding from its columns the discussion of those subjects which are so distasteful to Mr. Haven in the Liberator. That paper, therefore, cannot justly be charged with \"being its own worst enemy.\"",
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"text": "\"We won't talk of that now,\" answered Mrs. Forbes. \"Mark is his own worst enemy. Good night.\" True. No enemy however powerful and malicious, can so work a man's ruin as his own unbridled passions and depraved appetites.",
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76,
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"text": "So far as he could see, the girl had no screen future, though doubtless she was her own worst enemy. If someone had only taught her to be serious her career might have been worth while.",
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"text": "The Spanish arsonists have fled. […] But they are so blustery about their plans, they are their own worst enemy. Let's obtain two horses and then go into pursuit.",
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147,
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"text": "[Mauricio] Pochettino set his team up ideally to keep City at bay but once again, as they did in that Carabao Cup final loss to Liverpool, Chelsea were their own worst enemies as they squandered opportunities to banish memories of that reverse.",
"type": "quote"
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],
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"(intransitive, idiomatic) To act contrary to one's own interests; to cause problems for oneself; to self-sabotage."
],
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"translations": [
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"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"lang_code": "fi",
"sense": "to act contrary to one’s own interests",
"word": "olla itsensä pahin vihollinen"
},
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"sense": "to act contrary to one’s own interests",
"word": "ser o seu pior inimigo"
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Download raw JSONL data for be one's own worst enemy meaning in English (6.3kB)
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"title": "be one's own worst enemy",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-12-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-12-02 using wiktextract (6fdc867 and 9905b1f). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.