himself
Language: English
Part of speech: pron
Pronunciation: ipa: /hɪmˈsɛlf/
ipa: /ɪ̈mˈsɛlf/
rhymes: -ɛlf
Forms: form: he
form: herself
form: itself
form: themselves
form: himself
form: themselves
form: themself
form: Himself
form: himselfe
form: himselve
Etymology: From Middle English hymself, from Old English him selfum. Equivalent to him + -self.
Senses: examples: text: He injured himself.
text: Sunning himself on the board steps, I saw for the first time Mr. Farquhar Fenelon Cooke. He was dressed out in broad gaiters and bright tweeds, like an English tourist, and his face might have belonged to Dagon, idol of the Philistines.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
text: One Terrorgram user livestreamed himself stabbing five people outside of a mosque in Turkey, she said, and a 19-year-old Slovakian man praised the group in a manifesto before killing two people at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.
ref: 2024 September 9, Hannah Rabinowitz, “Alleged leaders of White supremacist group charged in effort to encourage terrorism and hate crimes”, in CNN:
glosses: Him; the male object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject
examples: text: He was injured himself.
text: Therefore the Lord himſelfe ſhal giue you a ſigne:[…].
ref: 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 7:14, column 2:
text: The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason. The architect of modern science was himself not very modern. He was obsessed with alchemy.
ref: 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:
glosses: He; used as an intensifier, often to emphasize that the referent is the exclusive participant in the predicate
examples: text: Yet it is that himselfe had been liberally gratified by his Unkle with militarie rewards, before ever he went to warres.
ref: 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 7, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:
text: With shame remembers, while himself was one / Of the same herd, himself the same had done.
ref: Sir John Denham (1614-1669)
text: Dennis: His glass is there and himself is in the toilet.
ref: 1998, Kirk Jones, Waking Ned, Tomboy films:
qualifier: otherwise archaic
glosses: The subject or non-reflexive object of a predicate; he himself.
examples: text: Has himself come down to breakfast yet?
text: Have you seen himself yet this morning?
glosses: The subject or non-reflexive object of a predicate; he (used of upper-class gentlemen, or sarcastically, of men who imagine themselves to be more important than others)
Synonyms: hisself
hissen
Derived terms: every man for himself
give someone enough rope and they'll hang themself
he who digs a pit for others falls in himself
Related terms: word: Ime
word: me
word: myselfmemysen
word: mine
word: mymineme
word: we
word: us
word: ourselvesourselfoursen
word: oursourn
word: our
word: you
word: yourselfyoursen
word: yoursyourn
word: your
word: thou
word: thee
word: thyselftheeselfthysen
word: thine
word: thythine
word: youye
word: yourselves
word: you ally'all you guys
word: y'allselves
word: all yours y'all's you guys' your guys'
word: all your y'all's your all's you guys' your guys'
word: he
word: him
word: himselfhisselfhissen
word: hishisn
word: his
word: she
word: her
word: herselfhersen
word: hershern
word: ithit
word: itselfhitself
word: itshis
word: itshishits
word: they
word: them
word: themself
word: themselves
word: theirs
word: their
word: one
word: oneself
word: –
word: one's
word: themhem
word: 'em
word: themselvestheirsen
word: theirstheirn
word: The following table shows a list of English personal pronoun
word: including archaic and dialectal forms. Dialectal and obsolete
word: archaic forms are in italics. 1 See Appendix:English third-person singular pronouns for attested neopronoun.