"Themselves" is the reflexive pronoun traditionally used in the third person plural. Ex.: They hurt themselves while playing football. More recently, "themselves" has been used as a gender-neutral pronoun to refer to a single person and avoid the cumbersome "himself or herself" phrase. Ex.: Somebody hurt themselves while playing football. (You want to avoid specifying if the "somebody" is male or female.) Traditional English grammar would have the above sentence as: Somebody hurt himself or herself while playing football. The use of themselves as a reflexive pronoun to refer to a single person is widespread, but considered by some as incorrect on the grounds that a plural cannot be used for just one person. So, people started using "themself" instead. Ex.: Somebody hurt themself while playing football. I must say I had never seen before I read your question today, so I would say this word is not all that common in English, at least in North America. For some more information, you may want to look at this: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/themself. Hope this helps.

I don't think themself is a word. Where did you hear it? -Do they have the same meaning and use?-

For singular, we use 'self'. I = myself you = yourself he = himself she = herself For plural, we use 'selves'. we = ourselves you = yourselves they = themselves So 'themself' is incorrect.

There is no themself. There is me, you, him, her, us you (plural) and them. myself yourself himself herself ourselves yourselves themselves

Actually I have heard it a few times and for the same reasons Claude offers - to obviate the need for gender explicit pronouns. It is grammatically wrong but not that uncommon. eg, "Someone might trip over that and hurt themself" The shorter OED offers this thought :- "Use of themselves to refer to a single person of unspecified sex is now becoming acceptable : see note at they . The apparently more logical form themself is not widely accepted , however ."