Meself / theirselves.

[derrynoose]

I am trying to figure out apparent inconsistencies in the construction of the words "myself, yourself , himself " etc. (I don't know the group title). The prefixes "my, your, our" are possessive adjectives, whilst "him, her, them" are the accusative case of the possessive pronouns. I assume that, at a stretch, "one" could also be taken as an accusative. Until I did theTimes 2 crossword at the weekend I thought that the word was "onesself" though I wouldn't have included an apostrophe.
Not a major issue but interesting!

[Clanad]

You err in describing your collection of words including 'my, your, our' as "possessive pronouns", when they are, in fact, nominative possessive... Seemingly a small, but important difference. They could also be (dependent on context) intensive or reflexive pronouns. Intensive if emphasizing and including the noun or reflexive if receiveing the action of the verb...

An adjective is a 'stand-alone' word that describes or modifies the noun...

[Quizmonster]

The original form was one's self...a two-word phrase with a possessive apostrophe...but by the early 19th century that had been telescoped down to the single word, oneself, in most situations. eg 'One must look after oneself in this world.'
The phrase form may still be found in psychological studies, for example, where phrases like one's id, one's ego or one's self...ie one's inner being...may appear.

[jno]

but why then not 'hisself' and 'theirselves'?

[Quizmonster]

Well, J, even in Old English in the 9th century, the form was 'him self' as two separate words. By the 16th century, the words had joined up as 'himself' and so it has remained, there being no very good reason for it to become 'hisself'. However, 'his self/hisself' HAS been used in dialects and when another word intervenes as in 'his own self' etc.
Much the same sort of process affected themselves/theirselves.

[Quizmonster]

I meant to add above, in answer to the original question, that (quote) "inconsistencies in the construction of words" are rife throughout English and that is one of the language's glories!

[jno]

I was just wondering at the different thought processes that produced 'my self' on the one hand but 'him self' on the other. I know there are inconsistencies everywhere - just curious about how this one came about. In the former, 'self' sounds like a noun, preceded by an adjective; in the latter it's, what, a sort of intensifier of 'him'?

[Quizmonster]

You asked for it, J...
Self was originally an adjective but later became a noun and a pronoun. It was unconnected syntactically to the word it related to - I, you, he etc - self being a nominative in apposition to that subject. As regards him self - which first appeared as two words in the 890s AD, the word him was not in the accusative case, but in the dative; that is. it implied ‘for' or ‘as to'. In other words, him self was saying, in effect, "the man as to himself". We see the same idea today when we say, "He is the very man who..." with ‘very' meaning much the same as ‘as to'.
The reason it became one word, himself, by the early 16th century was because the very closeness of the two words used constantly in this way simply DREW them together.

Originally, myself - recorded as early as the 850s AD - was meself with an ‘e'. As with the ‘him' above, the ‘me' was a dative form (for/as to). Thus, in ‘ic me self' - I myself - we have the I as ic (cf modern German Ich), self in apposition to that and me as the dative form.
Miselven was recorded in the 14th century, my self (two words) in the 15th and myself (one word) in the early 18th. The reason it changed from meself to myself was because of the unstressing of the vowel ‘e'. Presumably it went through a phase of being pronounced roughly as misself, so myself seemed like a reasonable spelling.

Both words, himself and myself, went through a typical process of evolution and simplification, just as so many other words have over the centuries.