itself

reflexive of it · masculine himself · feminine herself · gender neutral themself · plural themselves · alternative obsolete it self · alternative obsolete it selfe

1. neuterpersonalpronounreflexivesingularthird personit; A thing as the object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject

   When the opportunity presented itself, no feasible course of action suggested itself (to us).

   2 more examples

   The researchers posit that something they call the “hipster effect” asserts itself in human populations no matter how individualistic we imagine ourselves to be, because it’s individuality itself that sparks conformity.

   2014 December 2, David DiSalvo, “Are You Vulnerable to the Hipster Effect?”, in Psychology Today, archived from the original on 30 Aug 2025

   Nevertheless, Bumble, the dating app which once styled itself as a beacon of women’s empowerment because heterosexual women had to make the first move, appears to have missed the memo.

   2024 May 21, Arwa Mahdawi, “Sex-positive feminism had its moment – and now it has been replaced by voluntary celibacy”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 28 Jun 2024

2. emphaticneuterpersonalpronounsingularthird personit; used to intensify the subject, especially to emphasize that it is the only participant in the predicate

   The door itself is quite heavy.

   4 more examples

   Beautie alone is a ſoveraigne remedy againſt feare,griefe,and all melancholy fits; a charm,as Peter de la Seine and many other writers affirme,a banquet it ſelfe;he gives inſtance in diſcontented Menelaus that was ſo often freed by Helenas faire face: and ʰTully, 3 Tusc. cites Epicurus as a chiefe patron of this Tenent.

   1638, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy. […], 5th edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] [Robert Young, Miles Flesher, and Leonard Lichfield and William Turner] for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II, section 2, member 6, subsection iv, page 298

   So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

   1933 March 4, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 0:00:55 from the start, in Inaugural Address

   Lenin's idea of party hegemony developed naturally into that of the party's 'leading role' in a socialist society-i.e. into a despotism based on the principle that the party always knows better than the community itself what are the latter's interests, needs, and even desires […]

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 392

   The researchers posit that something they call the “hipster effect” asserts itself in human populations no matter how individualistic we imagine ourselves to be, because it’s individuality itself that sparks conformity.

   2014 December 2, David DiSalvo, “Are You Vulnerable to the Hipster Effect?”, in Psychology Today, archived from the original on 30 Aug 2025

3. archaicemphaticneuterpersonalpronounsingularthird personit; used to refer back to an earlier subject

   The oil by degrees gets covered with a curdy mass, which after some time settles to the bottom, while itself becomes limpid and colorless.

   1842, Andrew Ure, A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines