Theirself or Themself?
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Theirself or Themself?
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Re: Theirself or Themself?
#2"Themself" or "thine self" or "thyself" or "theirself" all sound ok. But theirself looks incorrect written down. I would use Themself if I was writing.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#3"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#4"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
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Re: Theirself or Themself?
#5"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
Yes, it sounds better. The rest of these words sound ... not quite "barbaric", but definitely uneducated and ignorant. I'd definitely recommend avoiding them if you are writing something professional.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#6"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc. As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object pronoun:
If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate them.
corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for "theirselves".
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#7"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this?
Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim about what is and isn't standard usage.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#8If you absolutely have to use one of those it would have to be 'themself'. 'their' clearly is wrong in that place because it's possessive pronoun.
The reason why 'their' can be used in the same position in the sentence is that it's used as a modifier to the object, i.e. the position in the sentence is the same but the syntax tree is different.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#9"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this? Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim about what is and isn't standard usage.
Thankfully professional lexicographers balance both emerging and traditional usage norms in their recommendations.
Re: Theirself or Themself?
#10"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the gender is unknown
I downvoted this comment because I don't think it brings anything to the discussion. I'm pretty sure it's obvious to every HN reader (and the post author themself) that "he" is the "correct" gender-unknown pronoun, along with "himself".
The submitted post is interesting because a lot of us prefer they/them for the gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun[0], and it raises an interesting corner case. I had to think about it for a bit, but I think "themself" sounds most natural to me.
[0] Why default to "he" when gender is unknown? Is correct number but incorrect gender better than "they", which is incorrect number but correct gender? "They" is natural to almost all native English speakers and has been used in that capacity in writing since at least Chaucer.
edit: Hm, now I wish I hadn't downvoted. Sorry about that. I suppose it's helpful for non-native HN speakers to know the "correct" word for academic writing, as much as it irritates me that that is what's considered correct.