zichzelf

Dutch

Alternative forms

• zich zelf (archaic)

Etymology

Univerbation of zich +‎ zelf.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /zɪxˈzɛlf/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: zich‧zelf
• Rhymes: -ɛlf

Pronoun

zichzelf

1. oneself; himself/herself/themselves

   Coordinate terms: haarzelf, hemzelf

2. yourself (in combination with the polite pronoun u.)

Usage notes

• Zichzelf is primarily used with verbs that are optionally reflexive. Verbs with mandatory reflexivity like zich vergissen typically take zich. Exceptions to this strong tendency show up, however, though this is a marginal but not per se erroneous phenomenon. Hendriks, Spenader and Smits (2008) note in a corpus 638 occurrences of the mandatorily reflexive verb ontpoppen involving the reflexive zich, versus 1 with the reflexive zichzelf.

Descendants

• Negerhollands: siself, śisel, sie selv