Themselves = English Themself = not English : )

Pronoun themself Reflexive and emphatic form of them when them is used as a non-gender-specific singular pronoun (singular they). Someone has hurt themself. Anyone who wants a car like mine can buy one themself. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/themself

Pronoun themselves personal pronoun (the reflexive case of they, the third-person plural personal pronoun) The people previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a preposition, where the people are also the subject of the verb; also used for emphasis. (reflexively): They’ve hurt themselves. (after a preposition): They fought among themselves. (for emphasis): They are going to try climbing Mount Everest themselves. The person of unspecified gender previously mentioned, as the object of a verb or following a preposition, where the person is also the subject of the verb; also used for emphasis.  [quotations ▼] (reflexively): Would whoever stole my phone please make themselves known. (after a preposition): They’ve brought this on themselves. (for emphasis): The children did this themselves. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/themselves

themselves is a reflexive pronoun for they my parents painted our house by themselves. they did their homework themselves.

Hi Nicole, One problem the English language has had to face is finding a gender-neutral singular pronoun. "It" doesn't work because that is already used for non-human things. The old usage of "he" is no good because it clearly excludes women. One current solution (aside from some very silly words made up by PC advocates) is to take the plural 3rd-person "they" and apply it to "he/she". This may not be as bad as it seems, because we had already replaced the 2nd-person singular "thou" with the plural "you" some centuries back. "Themselves" makes sense because it's consistent with the plural. I think some users have taken to writing "themself" to make it clear that it's a 3rd-person singular, not the plural. We're still working it out, but a safe bet is to avoid using "themself" because it sounds contradictory ("them" is still a plural!)... expect to be corrected for bad English sooner or later, if you do use it. One could argue for hours over this. ^^