So let’s see “themself or themselves”: “Themselves” is the traditionally correct reflexive pronoun for referring to a group or a singular individual in a gender-neutral manner, widely accepted in both formal and informal contexts. On the other hand, “themself” is emerging as a gender-n...
The meaning of THEMSELF is themselves —used chiefly as a gender-neutral reflexive form of they when referring to a single person in an indefinite way (as in 'each person can decide for themself') or to a person who is nonbinary.
pronounthemselves, though its use with a singular antecedent is rejected as ungrammatical by many people. The singular antecedent is more commonly paired with the third person singular reflexivehimselforherself,as recommended by traditional grammars ( someone capable of speaking for himself ). However,...
Previous scholarly work on the pronouns ourself and themself describes them as variants of ourselves and themselves. In this paper, attested tokens of ourself and themself are examined, and the contexts in which they appear are analyzed. This analysis shows that these forms, and even some less ...
There must have been a move towards pluralizing the singular suffix –self to –selfs or –selves for plural reflexive pronouns in the early to mid 16th century, when the forms ourselves and themselves first appeared. Returning to the OED note, themselfs (with only 26 examples on the OEC)...