Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • pronoun That one identical with it.
  • pronoun Used reflexively as the direct or indirect object of a verb or the object of a preposition.
  • pronoun Used for emphasis.
  • pronoun Used in an absolute construction.
  • pronoun Its normal or healthy condition or state.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The neuter pronoun corresponding to himself, herself. (See himself.) Its emphatic and reflexive uses are like those of himself.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • pronoun The neuter reflexive pronoun of it

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • pronoun reflexive it; A thing as the object of a verb or preposition that also appears as the subject
  • pronoun emphatic it; used to intensify the subject, especially to emphasize that it is the only participant in the predicate

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself….

    Laura (Riding) Jackson Friedman, Elizabeth 1994

  • This action of fundamental life manifests itself as a _polarization_ of the internal personality: almost at a point of crystallization, around which, provided there be homogeneous material and an undisturbed environment, _the definitive form composes itself_.

    Spontaneous Activity in Education Maria Montessori 1911

  • For if itself were a bad self to begin with all such advance of _itself_ would only make it worse.

    Progress and History Francis Sydney Marvin 1903

  • In vital activity we see, then, that which subsists of the direct movement in the inverted movement, _a reality which is making itself in a reality which is unmaking itself_.

    Evolution créatrice. English Henri Bergson 1900

  • Larkin touched one, and it immediately drew itself in, -- really _swallowed itself_; for these little things take this way of saving themselves from harm.

    Queer Stories for Boys and Girls Edward Eggleston 1869

  • '_But_ since our method of interpretation, after preparing and arranging a history, does not content itself with examining _the opinions and desires_ of THE MIND -- [hear] -- like common logic, but also inspects THE NATURE of THINGS, we so regulate the mind that it may be enabled to _apply itself_, in every respect, correctly to _that nature_.'

    The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Delia Bacon 1835

  • Hooker teacheth us, (482) that the service of God, in places not sanctified as churches are, hath not in itself (mark _in itself_) such perfection of grace and comeliness, as when the dignity of the place which it wisheth for, doth concur; and that the very majesty and holiness of the place where God is worshipped, bettereth even our holiest and best actions.

    The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) George Gillespie 1630

  • The UN itself now says that the school \itself was not hit, nor its grounds, nor the building, and no one in the school was hit by the Israelis.

    open Democracy News Analysis - Comments 2009

  • For the customary morality, that which education and opinion have consecrated, is the only one which presents itself to the mind with the feeling of being _in itself_ obligatory; and when a person is asked to believe that this morality _derives_ its obligation from some general principle round which custom has not thrown the same halo, the assertion is to him a paradox; the supposed corollaries seem to have a more binding force than the original theorem; the superstructure seems to stand better without, than with, what is represented as its foundation.

    Utilitarianism John Stuart Mill 1839

  • The term itself comes from the Greek word '' apokruphos ''

    Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] 2009

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