From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishself-denialˌself-deˈnial noun [uncountable] NOT HAVEwhen you do not do or have the things you enjoy, for moral or religious reasons —self-denying adjective
Examples from the Corpus
self-denial• She had always shown patience and self-denial when it came to the matter of other people's inventions.• Virginity, voluntary poverty, and self-denial had long been admired.• Second, to remove the standard dessert from the menu would penalise all those people who derive pleasure from conspicuous self-denial.• By these standards, the monks' self-denial seems tame.• For the exceptional practitioner of self-denial a special prize is in store.• Brocklehurst visits the school to lecture the students on self-denial and the horrors of the lusts of the flesh.• There is the self-denial of the musician who devotes all her time and energy to mastering her musical instrument.• But in our society the self-denial of which we speak has a moral dimension which is not strongly recognised in all civilisations. 