When you hear someone say hisself, your internal grammar alarm probably goes off. It sounds uneducated, rustic, or plain wrong. Standard English demands himself. Yet, in linguistics, hisself isn't a random slip of the tongue. It follows a distinct internal logic that makes total sense once you examine how pronouns are built.
To understand why hisself feels so wrong to modern ears—yet persists across rural dialects and historical texts—we have to look at pronoun case, historical morphology, and the way human brains naturally seek symmetry in language.
The Anatomy of a Reflexive Pronoun
Reflexive pronouns bounce the action of a sentence back onto the subject. When John prepares food, John is the doer and the receiver of the action. We write: John prepared himself.
In standard English, reflexive pronouns are formed by combining possessive determiners (my, your, our, your) or objective pronouns (him, them) with the words self or selves.
Look at the pattern:
- my + self = myself
- your + self = yourself
- our + selves = ourselves
- your + selves = yourselves
- them + selves = themselves (historically built on the objective case)
Notice the inconsistency in the third-person singular masculine. Instead of taking the possessive determiner his and adding self to form hisself—which would match the exact pattern of myself and yourself—standard English shifts to the objective case: him + self = himself.
The same shift happens in the feminine: her + self = herself (though her functions as both a possessive determiner and an objective pronoun).
Why People Say Hisself
Speakers who use hisself aren't breaking rules out of laziness. They are applying analogical leveling, a powerful linguistic process where irregular patterns are forced into regular, predictable rules.
If my turns into myself, and your turns into yourself, it is entirely logical for a speaker to assume his turns into hisself. The brain takes the possessive form (his) and pairs it with self, creating a symmetrical system.
According to the Linguistic Society of America, language variation and non-standard forms often represent internal rule-governed systems rather than random errors. Hisself is a textbook example of regularizing an irregular feature of standard English.
The Historical Timeline of Hisself
Far from being a modern invention of slang, hisself has centuries of history.
In Middle English and early Modern English, pronouns and reflexive markers were much less standardized than they are today. Writers and speakers frequently used hisself and theirself alongside himself and themselves.
In fact, historical corpora show hisself appearing in texts from the 14th through the 17th centuries without the heavy social stigma attached to it today. It was only during the 18th and 19th centuries, when prescriptive grammarians tried to lock English into rigid Latin-derived rules, that variants like hisself and theirself were officially branded as incorrect.
When public schooling standardized spelling and grammar across English-speaking nations, standard forms were elevated as "correct" while regional variants were pushed underground into working-class speech and Appalachian or Southern American dialects.
Standard vs. Non-Standard Usage Zones
While hisself follows a logical morphological rule, it remains outside the bounds of standard English. Using it in professional, academic, or formal writing will instantly flag your text as non-standard.
Here is how the two forms break down in practical application:
- Subject Position: Neither form belongs here. You wouldn't say Himself went to the store or Hisself went to the store. You use the subjective pronoun: He went to the store.
- Direct Object: Standard English requires himself. When a cat cleans hisself, standard grammar demands himself.
- Prepositional Object: In sentences like He bought a new car for himself, standard English insists on himself, while regional dialects utilizing hisself treat the prepositional phrase as a home for the possessive-plus-self formula.
- Emphatic Use: When adding emphasis—He built the cabin himself—hisself pops up naturally in conversational dialect (He built the cabin hisself).
Common Mistakes and Hypercorrections
Grammar anxiety often leads to humorous flip-flops. Because people are taught that hisself is bad grammar, they sometimes overcompensate in other areas, leading to hypercorrections.
For example, speakers might avoid hisself so aggressively that they misapply objective pronouns elsewhere, or they might judge regional speakers harshly while using equally non-standard constructions in their own casual speech (such as between you and I instead of between you and me).
Recognizing that hisself is simply a victim of historical standardization helps shift the perspective from moral judgment of a speaker's intelligence to an appreciation of regional linguistic diversity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is hisself a real word?
It is a real word in the sense that native speakers use it and understand it within specific regional and social dialects. However, it is not recognized as part of standard English by major dictionaries or style guides.
Why does English use himself instead of hisself?
Standard English retained the objective pronoun case (him) combined with self for the third-person masculine, rather than the possessive determiner (his). This creates an asymmetry when compared to myself and yourself.
Can I use hisself in creative writing?
Yes. If you're writing dialogue for a character from a specific regional background—such as historical fiction set in rural America—using hisself is an effective way to establish voice and realism.
Are there other non-standard reflexives like this?
Yes. Theirself and theirsives appear in various regional dialects for the exact same reason: speakers apply the possessive-plus-self rule to plural pronouns to create structural symmetry.
