Reflexive pronouns

Do you know how to use reflexive pronouns like myself, yourself, or themselves? Enhance your knowledge with a lesson given below and the grammar explanation to guide you better.

Look at these examples to see how reflexive pronouns are used.

• He painted the room by himself.

• I can’t believe I made that mistake myself!

• They prepared the meal for themselves.

Grammar explanation - Reflexive pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are words like myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. They refer back to a person or thing.

We often use reflexive pronouns when the subject and the object of a verb are the same.

• I bumped myself when I was moving the furniture.

• I hope you treat yourselves to something nice this weekend!

• My laptop keeps shutting down by itself.

• We should trust ourselves more.

1. Adding emphasis

We can add a reflexive pronoun for emphasis when it's unusual or different.

• He wants to learn to cook so that he can prepare his meals himself.

• She had a minor injury, so she found it hard to dress herself.

We can use reflexive pronouns to emphasize that someone does it personally, not anybody else.

• The report was definitely submitted on time. I submitted it myself.

• Are you fixing the car yourselves?

We can also use a reflexive pronoun together with the noun it refers to in order to emphasize it.

• We spoke to the principal herself, and she promised to help us.

• Teachers themselves should encourage students to ask questions.

2. By + reflexive pronoun

We can use by + reflexive pronoun to mean alone.

• He prefers to read by himself.

• Do you like spending time by yourself?

3. Reciprocal pronouns

Notice the difference between plural reflexive pronouns and reciprocal pronouns (each other, one another).

• They're treating themselves to a fancy dinner.

• They're surprising each other with birthday plans.

• We glanced at ourselves in the shop window.

• We exchanged smiles with each other.

With reciprocal pronouns (e.g., each other), each person does the action to the other person/people but not to themselves.

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