ourselves
UK/aʊəˈsɛlvz/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Northumbria/wɐˈsɛlz/
ourselves pronoun: us; the group including the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition when that group also is the subject.
Pronoun
ourselves (first personal plural pronoun, reflexive case of we)
- Us; the group including the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition when that group also is the subject.
- We should keep this for ourselves.
- Let's not beat ourselves up over this.
- Intensifies the subject as the group including the speaker, especially to indicate that no one else satisfies the predicate or needs to be included.
- We did it ourselves.
- Referring to everyone being addressed.
- Come on everyone! Let's get ourselves up and out of bed, please.
- Now then children, I'm not going to help you with the next problem. We should be able to work this one out ourselves.
- Referring to an individual person being addressed, especially a person in the speaker's care; also ourself.
- Coordinate term: nurse's we
- Hello Mrs Miggins. Did we manage to wash ourselves this morning?
ourselves meaning in Arabic
ourselves in Arabic
- emphatic: we
- أَنْفُسَنَا ʔanfusanā
- reflexive: us
- أَنْفُسَنَا ʔanfusanā
Examples of ourselves in a sentence
- Between you and me, I think the boss is crazy. Let's keep this between ourselves.
- After we'd rowed for an hour, we found ourselves stranded ten fathoms from shore.
- We surprised ourselves by reaching the mountaintop in under two hours.
Synonyms of ourselves
Forms of ourselves
| reflexive | case of we |
|---|
Origin of ourselves
Morphologically our + -selves.
Words formed from ourselves
Words that rhyme with ourselves
Questions about ourselves
- What does ourselves mean?
- Ourselves means us; the group including the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition when that group also is the subject.
- What is ourselves in Arabic?
- Ourselves in Arabic is أَنْفُسَنَا (ʔanfusanā). See Ourselves meaning in Arabic.
- What part of speech is ourselves?
- Ourselves is a pronoun.
- How do you pronounce ourselves?
- Ourselves is pronounced /aʊəˈsɛlvz/ (UK).
Words near ourselves in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ourselves (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ourselves.ogg.
Cite this entry: “ourselves.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ourselves. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.