self-service

1. 1.

   the practice of serving yourself (as in a grocery or cafeteria)

   Broaderservice

1. 1.

   of or denoting an establishment (a restaurant or shop etc.) where customers serve themselves

Questions about self-service

What does self-service mean?

self-service means "the practice of serving yourself (as in a grocery or cafeteria)". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in self-service?

self-service has 3 syllables: self--ser-vice. The stress falls on "self-".

Is self-service a common word?

self-service is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.