himself

• Himself (honorific)
• himselfe (obsolete)
• himselve (obsolete)

From Middle English hymself, from Old English him selfum. Equivalent to him +‎ -self.

• IPA^(key): /hɪmˈsɛlf/, /ɪ̈msɛlf/

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• Hyphenation: him‧self
• Rhymes: -ɛlf

himself (the third person singular, masculine, personal pronoun, reflexive form of he, feminine herself, neuter itself, plural themselves, gender-neutral singular himself or themselves or themself)

1. (reflexive pronoun) Him; the male object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject

   He injured himself.

   • 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:

     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.

2. (emphatic) He; used as an intensifier, often to emphasize that the referent is the exclusive participant in the predicate

   He was injured himself.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 7:14, column 2:

     Therefore the Lord himſelfe ſhal giue you a ſigne: […].

   • 2014 June 21, “Magician’s brain”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8892:

     The [Isaac] Newton that emerges from the [unpublished] manuscripts is far from the popular image of a rational practitioner of cold and pure reason.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.

3. (Ireland, otherwise archaic) The subject or non-reflexive object of a predicate; he himself.
   • 1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 7, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC:

     Yet it is that himselfe had been liberally gratified by his Unkle with militarie rewards, before ever he went to warres.

   • Sir John Denham (1614-1669)

     With shame remembers, while himself was one / Of the same herd, himself the same had done.

   • 1998, Kirk Jones, Waking Ned, Tomboy films:

     Dennis: His glass is there and himself is in the toilet.

4. (Ireland) 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)

   Has himself come down to breakfast yet?

   Have you seen himself yet this morning?

• hisself
• hissen

• “himself”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “himself”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.

• Flemish, flemish, mehfils