Himself

How to spell himself

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce himself

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does himself mean?

1. pronounThe reflexive or emphatic form of 'he', referring back to a male subject already mentioned.

Himself in a sentence

• He taught himself to repair the engine over the summer.

• The manager wrote the report himself rather than delegating it.

Where does himself come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, built from the Old English pronoun 'him' (the dative and accusative form of 'he') joined to 'self', which in Old English was 'self' or 'seolf' meaning 'one's own person'. For centuries the two parts were often written separately, as 'him self', before settling into a single fixed word. The pattern matches a whole family of reflexive pronouns such as 'myself', 'yourself', and 'herself', though English is slightly inconsistent: some use the possessive form (my-self) while 'himself' and 'themselves' use the objective form (him-self), which is why the spelling resists logic and must simply be learned. The word has been in continuous everyday use since well before the Norman Conquest, and the trap for adult writers is the occasional dialect or nonstandard 'hisself', which is not accepted in standard writing.

How the word is built

• him (objective pronoun)
• self (one's own person)