hirself en · PRON
Pronunciation
- hērˈself
- /hiɹˈsɛlf/
Etymology
From hir + -self, following pattern of herself, himself, and itself.
Meanings
-
(gender-neutral, nonstandard, personal, pronoun, reflexive, singular, third-person) Hir, themselves; gender-neutral third-person singular object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject, coordinate with gendered himself and herself.
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.
2009, Pope Gus Rasputin Nishnabotna Sni-A-Bar, “Biscuitus”, in The Nuclear Platypus Biscuit Bible: A Spiritual Guide for the Disciples of Biscuitism, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 16: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.
2001 June 9, Timothy Leary, chapter 8, in Your Brain is God, Oakland: Ronin Publishing, →ISBN, →LCCN, LCC BP570.L43 2001: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.
2010 October 12, Erica Lopez, The Girl Must Die: A Monster Girl Memoir, Hicken, Jeffrey, San Francisco: Monster Girl Media, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 143:It is here that Scratch has found hirself, bored out of hir mind but unable to sleep.
1996 June, Catilin Sullivan with Bornstein, Kate, Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure, New York: Serpent's Tail, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, LCC PS3569.U3449 N43 1996, page 13: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.
2011, Jody Norton, “Transchildren and the Discipline of Children's Literature”, in Kenneth B. Kidd, Michelle Ann Abate, editors, Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature, University of Michigan, →ISBN, LCC PS374.H63 O84 2011, page 306: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.
2000, Peter David, Renaissance (Star Trek New Frontier: Excalibur #2), Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →OL, page 229:
-
(emphatic, gender-neutral, nonstandard, personal, pronoun, reflexive, singular, third-person) Sie; an intensive repetition of a gender-neutral subject, often used to indicate exclusiveness of that person as the only satisfier of a predicate.
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.
1997 December 18, Kate Bornstein, My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely, London, New York: Routledge, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, LCC HQ1075.B69 1998, page 164: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.
2002, Frank Schaap, The Words That Took Us There: Ethnography in a Virtual Reality, Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, →ISBN, →OL, page 90:Ash hadn't experienced much of that hirself, but s/he assumed it could happen.
2003 April 1, Susan Wright, Slave Trade (Slave Trade Trilogy #1), Pocket Books, →ISBN, →OL, page 97:
Hyponyms
Relateds
other attested gender-neutral pronouns