Themself or themselves?
themself is a pronoun meaning “The reflexive form of they, the third-person singular personal pronoun. The…”; themselves is a pronoun meaning “The reflexive case of they, the third-person plural personal pronoun. The group…”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) themselves is about 363 times as common as themself.
What is the difference between themself and themselves?
| themself | themselves | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | pronoun | pronoun |
| Meaning | proscribedThe reflexive form of they, the third-person singular personal pronoun. The single person previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a… | The reflexive case of they, the third-person plural personal pronoun. The group of people, animals, or objects previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or… The reflexive case of they, the third-person singular personal pronoun. The single person previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a… |
| Example | Someone could hurt themself | They’ve hurt themselves |
| Pronunciation | /ðɛmˈsɛlf/ | /ðɛmˈsɛlvz/ [ðɛmˈsɛɫvz] /ðəmˈsɛlvz/ |
| In writing | about once in every 3 million words | 145 times per million words |
Sources: themself and themselves in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of themself and themselves
themself
- 1
proscribedThe reflexive form of they, the third-person singular personal pronoun. The single person previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a preposition (also used for emphasis)
Someone could hurt themself
themselves
- 1
The reflexive case of they, the third-person plural personal pronoun. The group of people, animals, or objects previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a preposition (also used for…
They’ve hurt themselves
- 2
The reflexive case of they, the third-person singular personal pronoun. The single person previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a preposition (also used for emphasis)
Would whoever stole my phone please make themselves known
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, themself or themselves?
themself appears about once in every 3 million words; themselves 145 times per million words.
themself about once in every 3 million wordsthemselves 145 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search themself vs themselves?
“themself vs themselves” is searched about 50 times a month on Bing (Google reports it together with close variants, so it has no figure of its own) in the United States.
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.