grammatical number - Why themselves and himself - English Language . . . Your "killed him killed himself" example has an obvious counterexample: "he killed his enemy", which is equally valid and would support the opposite logic Then you say "the idea isn't derived from something belonging to someone", but you don't explain why most of the reflexive pronouns follow a genitive structure, and only a couple don't
Im tired of writing out the phrase himself or herself. What are my . . . @Jim in fact funnily enough, the KJV has done a pas de deux with English spellings through its later editions as it was updated in that regard but also influenced a lot of people's idea of the "correct" spelling, though not the first edition which wasn't even consistent with itself, due to a mix of different writers being involved, and printers opting for longer or shorter spellings as suited
What is a proper gender-neutral form of himself or herself I found 41 occurrences in the OED, from Caxton's 1483 "Humble themself the one ageynst the other", to a 1978 quotation from American Speech "Personal singular you similarly takes what is formally a plural verb form (are, were), as do French vous, German Sie, and Russian vy; as with singular they-themself, this `pluralization' of singular you can be said to follow reflexivization (whence a
Gender neutral reflexive pronoun — equivalent to himself and herself "himself or herself" It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast himself or herself in the role of victim Or: "him or herself" It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast him or herself in the role of victim Update: Another approach is to just choose a verb that isn't reflexive: It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will play the role of
Usage of he himself - English Language Usage Stack Exchange "Himself" here is actually an intensifier rather than a reflexive pronoun (the World Atlas of Language Structures notes that they are often identical) As such it very much belongs with the noun phrase it is intensifying ("He"), and splitting them with a comma would weaken that relationship
Why themselves instead of himself when referring to third-person . . . Instead of referring repeatedly to some male or female subject pronoun, you can use they themselves to avoid emphasizing one gender or overloading the text with he she, his her, himself herself and so on The reader can now jump to chapter 4 to reinforce what they have learned in this chapter Instead of
Him Her vs Himself Herself - English Language Usage Stack Exchange And here we can use the reflexive pronoun himself This is a fairly common official statement given the Google search results First statement returned around 53,700 results on exact string match while the second statement just returned around 4,310 results
grammar - Which reflexive or intensive pronoun should I use for an . . . It's "themselves" unless you want to say "himself or herself" every time A side note: Although this is how I reference and understand referenced a person of unknown gender, there have been disputes about the usage of gender-neutral pronouns, especially in recent years However, you would be understood using "themselves":
Is himself in? What does it mean? - English Language Usage Stack . . . "So the Irish sentence, Sé féin atá ann, meaning 'It's him—that one,' becomes translated into Hiberno-English as 'It's himself,'" Ó Broin says "So it's almost certain that Irish Gaelic is the origin of this phrase, 'It's himself '" In your example, the stranger is almost certainly asking to speak with the master of the house
Him or herself v. himself or herself? - English Language Usage . . . @tchrist, You're right that that example sounds unnatural I would reword it if presented with that sentence (Note: My American Heritage Dictionary doesn't even have "themself" in it ) In the OP's sentence, the writer went to the trouble to use him or herself, I think he could have gone the distance and used himself or herself –