What does "ourselves" mean?

Us; the group including the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition when that group also is the subject.

What is a synonym for "ourselves"?

Common synonyms include: alter ego, better self, ego, he, her, him.

//aʊəˈsɛlvz// pron, slang

pron, slang ·Common ·High school level

Pronoun

1
Us; the group including the speaker as the object of a verb or preposition when that group also is the subject. reflexive
"We should keep this for ourselves."
2
Intensifies the subject as the group including the speaker, especially to indicate that no one else satisfies the predicate or needs to be included. emphatic
"We did it ourselves."
3
Referring to everyone being addressed. colloquial
"Come on everyone! Let's get ourselves up and out of bed, please."
4
Referring to an individual person being addressed, especially a person in the speaker's care; also ourself. colloquial
"Coordinate term: nurse's we"

"When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves."

Morphologically our + -selves.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.