Look at these examples to see how reflexive pronouns are used.
She looked at herself in the mirror.
I'm trying to teach myself Italian with an app.
Our children walk to school by themselves.
Try this exercise to test your grammar.
- Grammar test 1
Read the explanation to learn more.
Grammar explanation
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 cut myself when I was making dinner last night.
I hope you enjoy yourselves at the party tonight!
My phone isn't working properly. It turns itself off for no reason.
We need to believe in ourselves more.
Adding emphasis
We can add a reflexive pronoun for emphasis when it's unusual or different.
He wants to pass his driving test so that he can drive himself to work.
She broke her arm, so she couldn't wash herself very easily.
We can use reflexive pronouns to emphasise that someone does it personally, not anybody else.
The door was definitely locked. I locked it myself.
Are you redecorating your flat yourselves?
We can also use a reflexive pronoun together with the noun it refers to in order to emphasise it.
We talked to the manager herself, and she agreed to give us our money back.
Parents themselves need to take more responsibility for their children's learning.
By + reflexive pronoun
We can use by + reflexive pronoun to mean alone.
He usually goes on holiday by himself.
Do you enjoy being by yourself?
Reciprocal pronouns
Notice the difference between plural reflexive pronouns and reciprocal pronouns (each other, one another).
They're buying themselves a new television.
They're buying each other small gifts.
We looked at ourselves in the mirror.
We looked at each other in surprise.
With reciprocal pronouns (e.g. each other), each person does the action to the other person/people but not to themselves.
Do this exercise to test your grammar again.
- Grammar test 2
In high school English exam, I got a debate with teacher on my answer.
It is a writng test and the intended answer is this
: Preparing the ability to adapt yourself to new circumstances is crucial.
My answer is like
: Preparing the ability yourself to adapt to new circumstances is crucial.
Teacher says there is no 'you' as a subject so that 'yourself' cannot emphasize nothing. So it's not correct sentence.
But I cannot accept her explination. I know my sentence is quite awkward, but is it grammatically incorrect? It's vital for my score result. Please give your opinions.
Hello koreanenglish,
Exams are taken in the context of teaching and classwork that we are not familiar with. I'm afraid we don't get involved in discussions about them.
Best regards,
Kirk
LearnEnglish team
Hello i have a question, why do you use the reflexive pronoun "yourself" in a phrase like (The instructions on the box say "do it yourself")?.
Hi XB4001,
Thanks for your question. It emphasises the idea of you doing it alone. In the example you mentioned, it shows people that they can do it alone, i.e. without needing help from anyone else. It therefore sounds like it's easy to do. (Saying only "Do it" does not necessarily mean this.)
I hope that helps to understand it.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
thank you very much, I have guessed that that's the answer but wasn't sure about it and you were the only one who answered my question.
Hi guys. In this sentence "I cooked the food myself", I know that the reflexive pronoun is performing the emphatic use. But, since I emphasized that I cooked alone, can I say it's both emphatic and idiomatic?
Hi leo15722,
I'm not 100% clear how you define "idiomatic". There are several definitions - it can mean "natural-sounding" or "correct-sounding". Or, a more technical definition is that it means "having a meaning that is not obvious from the words contained in the phrase". In this phrase, I would say that the meaning is fairly transparent when we look at the words, so it's not idiomatic in the technical sense. But it is a common and natural-sounding construction, so it is idiomatic in that sense.
What do you think?
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi again. So, what I meant was ,for example, in this sentence "He usually goes on holiday by himself", we call it "idiomatic use" because the reflexive pronoun demonstrates that the subject is perfoming an action alone. But, not always we use the preposition "by" to perform this idiomatic use like this sentence "I hope the children behave themselves."
For that reason, I was wondering if this sentence "I cooked the food myself" since I cooked it alone, if it has that idiomatic use too.
Thank you
Hello again leo15722,
I'm afraid I may have unintentionally misled you in my previous comment. I was writing from the perspective of Spanish or Catalan grammar (which I suppose are fairly similar to Portuguese), where reflexive verbs have a variety of uses but don't vary so much in form. From that perspective, reflexive structures with a prepositional phrase could be called 'idiomatic', but that's not really something you'd find in an authoritative grammar.
So if you find this idea of 'idiomatic use' useful for understanding how reflexive pronouns are used in English, then by all means use it, but as a kind of personal understanding.
I hope this helps, and sorry for complicating things earlier!
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi. Can I ask you a question? So, in this sentence "Help yourself with another drink", is it idiomatic, reflexive action or is it both of them?