"It is not an actor pretending to be Reagan or Thatcher, it is, in grotesque form, the person themself." - Ian Hislop (1984) quoted in Fowler's Regional preferences It is useful when referring to a single person of indeterminate gender, where the plural form themselves might seem incongruous, as in: In 2002, Payne and Huddleston, in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, called its use in standard dialect "rare and acceptable only to a minority of speakers" but "likely to increase with the growing acceptance of they as a singular pronoun". Its use has been increasing since the 1970s or 1980s, though it is sometimes still classified as "a minority form". Themself is attested from the 14th to 16th centuries. If I lose my phone, a child lends me its. If I lose my phone, a child lends me his. If I lose my phone, a child lends me theirs.Ī child dresses themself. If I lose my phone, my children lend me theirs. If I lose my phone, my daughter lends me hers. Inflected forms of third-person personal pronouns them, their, and theirs), except that in the reflexive form, themself is sometimes used instead of themselves. Like the "singular you", "singular they" permits a singular antecedent, but is used with the same verb forms as plural they, and has the same inflected forms as plural they (i.e.
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