I found 41 occurrences in the OED, from Caxton's 1483 "Humble themself the one ageynst the other", to a 1978 quotation from American Speech "Personal singular you similarly takes what is formally a plural verb form (are, were), as do French vous, German Sie, and Russian vy; as with singular they-themself, this `pluralization' of singular you can be said to follow reflexivization …

Your "killed him/killed himself" example has an obvious counterexample: "he killed his enemy", which is equally valid and would support the opposite logic. Then you say "the idea isn't derived from something belonging to someone", but you don't explain why most of the reflexive pronouns follow a genitive structure, and only a couple don't.

"himself or herself" It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast himself or herself in the role of victim. Or: "him or herself" It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will cast him or herself in the role of victim. Update: Another approach is to just choose a verb that isn't reflexive: It is unbelievable how a perpetrator will play the role of ...

2015年2月24日 · Instead of referring repeatedly to some male or female subject pronoun, you can use they/themselves to avoid emphasizing one gender or overloading the text with he/she, his/her, himself/herself and so on. The reader can now jump to chapter 4 to reinforce what they have learned in this chapter. Instead of

2015年1月7日 · @Jim in fact funnily enough, the KJV has done a pas de deux with English spellings through its later editions as it was updated in that regard but also influenced a lot of people's idea of the "correct" spelling, though not the first edition which wasn't even consistent with itself, due to a mix of different writers being involved, and printers opting for longer or …

2014年10月29日 · "So the Irish sentence, Sé féin atá ann, meaning 'It's him—that one,' becomes translated into Hiberno-English as 'It's himself,'" Ó Broin says. "So it's almost certain that Irish Gaelic is the origin of this phrase, 'It's himself.'" In your example, the stranger is almost certainly asking to speak with the master of the house.

2010年10月19日 · "Himself" here is actually an intensifier rather than a reflexive pronoun (the World Atlas of Language Structures notes that they are often identical). As such it very much belongs with the noun phrase it is intensifying ("He"), and splitting them with a comma would weaken that relationship.

As others have suggested, himself or herself or him- or herself are possible and acceptable; I feel that him or herself is also fine, and perhaps even better. Although, indeed, him(-) or herself looks like illegitimately cutting up a word, this is how I think most people would say it in speech.

2020年12月7日 · It's "themselves" unless you want to say "himself or herself" every time. A side note: Although this is how I reference and understand referenced a person of unknown gender, there have been disputes about the usage of gender-neutral pronouns, especially in recent years. However, you would be understood using "themselves":

2019年10月9日 · 'Though dead for three years, the ghost of this scoundrel threatened greater harm to Sherlock Holmes than Professor Moriarty himself had done.' can be paraphrased 'Though dead for three years, the ghost of Professor Moriarty threatened greater harm to Sherlock Holmes than the actual Professor Moriarty had done.' 'The ghost' is a metaphor meaning the legacy, …