Itself

How to spell itself

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce itself

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does itself mean?

1. pronounThe reflexive or emphatic form of 'it', referring back to a thing, animal, or situation already mentioned.

Itself in a sentence

• The cat groomed itself in the warm patch of sunlight.

• The machine resets itself automatically after each cycle.

Where does itself come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is a compound of the Old English pronoun 'hit' (later 'it'), meaning the neuter 'it', and 'self', from Old English 'self' or 'seolf', meaning 'one's own person'. The two parts were originally written separately, as 'it self', and only gradually fused into a single word over the medieval and early modern period. The reflexive and emphatic 'self' words form a tidy family in English, alongside myself, yourself, himself, and herself, all built on the same Germanic root for the idea of one's own being. Speakers sometimes hesitate over whether to write it as one word or two, but the modern standard fuses it completely into 'itself', with no apostrophe and no space. The lack of an apostrophe trips writers because 'it's' (with one) means 'it is', whereas 'its' and 'itself' are possessive and reflexive forms that never take one.

How the word is built

• it (third-person neuter pronoun)
• self (one's own person or entity)