English

Pronoun

hirself ‎(a reflexive, third person singular, gender-neutral (or multigendered) personal pronoun)

1. (neologism, reflexive) hir, themself; Gender-neutral third-person singular object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject, coordinate with gendered himself and herself.
   • 1996 June, Sullivan, Catilin, Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure, New York: Serpent's Tail, ISBN 9781852424183, LCCN 95072971, OL 820831M, LCC PS3569.U3449 N43 1996, page 13:

     It is here that Scratch has found hirself, bored out of hir mind but unable to sleep.

   • 2000, David, Peter, Renaissance (Star Trek New Frontier: Excalibur #2), Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0743422260, OL 3665551M, page 229:

     Hir nostrils flared, and s/he stopped where s/he was, balancing hirself on hir toes without thought, as if poising hirself to make some sort of attack on whoever was there.

   • 2001 June 9, Leary, Timothy, chapter 8, in Your Brain is God, Oakland: Ronin Publishing, ISBN 9781579510527, LCCN 2001118555, LCC BP570.L43 2001:

     The working person discovered that hir own body belonged, not to the state or to the moralist or to the authoritarian doctor, but to hirself.

   • 2009, Pope Gus Rasputin Nishnabotna Sni-A-Bar, “Biscuitus”, in The Nuclear Platypus Biscuit Bible: A Spiritual Guide for the Disciples of Biscuitism, ISBN 9780578026633, LCCN 2008900551, page 16:

     Alas, S/He then remembered S/He had created Hirself to be omnisciently all-knowing and all-seeing, so there were no possibilities S/He didn't already know.

   • 2010 October 12, Lopez, Erica, The Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir, Hicken, Jeffrey, San Francisco: Monster Girl Media, ISBN 978-0984401406, LCCN 21010902427, page 143:

     Ze changed hir name to one of those New Testament names, and re-fashioned hirself into a soft, puffy, half-finished hermaphrodite nicknamed, The Pop n' Fresh Doe.

   • 2011, Norton, Jody, “Transchildren and the Discipline of Children's Literature”, in Kidd, Kenneth B.; Abate, Michelle Ann, editors, Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature, University of Michigan, ISBN 9780472071463, LCC PS374.H63 O84 2011, page 306:

     A harrowing series of violent and transphobic confrontations (including some with hir parents) drives Ludo to attempt to kill hirself by going to sleep in a freezer.

2. (neologism, emphatic) sie; an intensive repetition of a gender-neutral subject, often used to indicate exclusiveness of that person as the only satisfier of a predicate.
   • 1997 December 18, Bornstein, Kate, My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely, London, New York: Routledge, ISBN 9780415916738, LCCN 98134184, OL 7495768M, LCC HQ1075.B69 1998, page 164:

     The trouble starts when gender (identity) ceases to be a reference point for connecting with a living growing person and is substituted for the person hirself.

   • 2002, Schaap, Frank, The Words That Took Us There: Ethnography in a Virtual Reality, Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, ISBN 9055891991, OL 17062341M, page 90:

     OOC talk and actions are taken to represent the player hirself and help other players to form an image, however tentative it may be, of that player.

   • 2003 April 1, Wright, Susan, Slave Trade (Slave Trade Trilogy #1), Pocket Books, ISBN 9780743466851, OL 3283799M, page 97:

     Ash hadn't experienced much of that hirself, but s/he assumed it could happen.

Synonyms

• themself
• (neologism) emself, perself

Hyponyms

• himself, herself

Usage notes

See usage notes for hir.

See also

• other attested and proposed gender-neutral pronouns