Emphatic Pronouns: Definition and Examples

Emphatic Pronouns 

To emphasize the subject, emphatic pronouns are employed. They emphasize the subject by returning back to it to illustrate that it takes action. The subject can be a noun or a pronoun, as is customary. As a result, they’re also called intensive pronouns. Emphatics pronouns are just reflexive pronouns with a different function. 

These can also be made by ending specific personal pronouns with –self (single) or –selves (plural). They are determined by the noun’s number and gender. 

To put it simply, when –self and –selves are used to show emphasis, or to stress on something they are called emphatic pronouns. 

Examples: 

• I myself did it. 
• I will get this cleaned up myself. 
• We saw the President himself. 
• The puppy opened the room itself. 

PS: 

Here’s a little trick you could use to check if the pronoun that you have used is an emphatic pronoun: if you remove the emphatic pronoun and attempt emphasizing the thing you’re trying to emphasize with your voice, you’ll know it’s an emphatic pronoun. 

Let us take the above examples to do this test: 

• I did it. 
• I will get this cleaned up. 
• We saw the President. 
• The puppy opened the room. 

Here, even after removing the emphatic pronoun, the meaning remains the same.