Intensive Pronouns

What Are Intensive Pronouns? (with Examples)

The intensive pronouns (also called emphatic pronouns) are myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves.

These words can be either intensive pronouns or reflexive pronouns.

This page is about their use as intensive pronouns.

Using Intensive Pronouns

An intensive pronoun refers back to another noun (or pronoun) in the sentence to emphasize it. For example: When used for emphasis, a word like himself is called an intensive pronoun (which is also known as an emphatic pronoun).

Examples of Intensive Pronouns

Here are some examples of intensive pronouns: Note: It's not always about people: You can test if it's an intensive pronoun by removing it and seeing if you get the same effect by emphasizing the thing you're trying to emphasize with your voice (shown here in uppercase).

A Quick Test


See also: reflexive pronouns

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See Also

Me or myself Reflexive pronouns Glossary of grammatical terms