self vs substance

self

noun
  • Self-interest or personal advantage. 

  • A flower having its colour uniform as opposed to variegated. 

  • An individual person as the object of the person's own reflective consciousness (plural selves). 

  • One individual's personality, character, demeanor, or disposition. 

  • The subject of one's own experience of phenomena: perception, emotions, thoughts. 

  • A seedling produced by self-pollination (plural selfs). 

  • Identity or personality. 

  • Any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic). 

pron
  • Myself. 

adj
  • Of or relating to any molecule, cell, or tissue of an organism's own (belonging to the self), as opposed to a foreign (nonself) molecule, cell, or tissue (for example, infective, allogenic, or xenogenic). 

  • Having its own or a single nature or character throughout, as in colour, composition, etc., without addition or change; of the same kind; unmixed. 

verb
  • To fertilise by the same strain; to inbreed. 

  • To fertilise by the same individual; to self-fertilise or self-pollinate. 

substance

noun
  • Substantiality; solidity; firmness. 

  • Physical matter; material. 

  • Material possessions; estate; property; resources. 

  • Hypostasis. 

  • Drugs (illegal narcotics) 

  • The essential part of anything; the most vital part. 

  • A form of matter that has constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. 

verb
  • To give substance to; to make real or substantial. 

How often have the words self and substance occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )