When people compare hisself vs himself, there's a clear winner: himself is the only form accepted in standard English. "Hisself" doesn't appear in any major dictionary as a valid word. It's a pattern that feels logical in casual speech, but it breaks the rules that govern how English reflexive pronouns are formed.
Why "hisself" feels natural
The confusion makes sense when you look at other reflexive pronouns. "Herself" builds on "her." "Myself" builds on "my." "Yourself" builds on "your." If you follow that pattern and start from "his," you get "hisself." It's a predictable extension of a rule that doesn't quite hold for third-person masculine pronouns.
But English isn't perfectly consistent. "Himself" was built on the Old English genitive form "him," not on the possessive "his." The language settled on "himself" centuries ago and has stayed there. Regional dialects, particularly in parts of the American South and Appalachia, do use "hisself" in everyday speech, and it carries real historical roots. Standard written English, however, doesn't accept it.
The reflexive pronoun rule
Reflexive pronouns refer back to the subject of the sentence. English has eight of them: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves. "Hisself" and "theirselves" are the two that speakers most often substitute, because both feel like logical extensions of a pattern that isn't really there.
The correct forms to know:
- Himself (third-person masculine singular): "He hurt himself."
- Herself (third-person feminine singular): "She helped herself."
- Themselves (third-person plural): "They sorted it out themselves."
None of these take the possessive form of the pronoun as their base. "Himself" doesn't come from "his," just as "themselves" doesn't come from "their." English formed these words differently, and the pattern simply has to be learned.
When to use "himself"
Himself works in two main situations. First, as a reflexive object, where the subject and the object are the same person: "He made himself a sandwich." Second, as an intensifier that emphasises the subject without changing the meaning: "The director himself signed the letter." Both uses are common and natural.
"Hisself" can't replace "himself" in either role in formal or standard writing. It will mark the text as non-standard immediately. That matters in professional emails, academic writing, journalism, and any context where standard grammar is expected.
Much like hardly never vs hardly ever, where one form violates a grammar rule despite sounding natural in speech, "hisself" is a case where spoken habit and written standard part ways. The spoken version persists because it's logical by analogy. The written standard persists because it's been fixed for centuries.
A quick memory trick
Think of it this way: the reflexive for "he" is "him," not "his." So the reflexive pronoun stays with "him": him + self = himself. If that feels counterintuitive, just check whether you'd write "her" or "she" in front of "self" for a woman. "Herself" wins, not "sheself." The same logic stops you reaching for "hisself."
For anyone already confident with pronoun rules, this is a quick fix. For learners coming from languages where reflexive pronouns work on possessive stems, it's worth noting explicitly that English takes a different path for the third person singular masculine. The word is himself. Full stop.
Pronoun errors like this one tend to cluster. If you're auditing your writing for non-standard forms, it's worth checking nearby issues too. Somebody vs someone is another pronoun question that trips up careful writers, even though the fix there is more about tone than correctness.
The bottom line: himself is correct in every standard context. Hisself belongs to dialect and informal speech, and it's worth keeping out of any writing where standard English is expected.