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DUTCH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

zich.

Third person singular and plural reflexive pronoun; himself, herself, itself, themselves, oneself

4 characters1 syllables approx.Nederlands language

Meaning & usage

pron/zɪx/
  1. Third person singular and plural reflexive pronoun; himself, herself, itself, themselves, oneself

    pronoun · reflexive
  2. Second person singular and plural formal reflexive pronoun; yourself, yourselves

    formal · pronoun · reflexive
    Sloeg u zich in het donker?
    U kunt zich hier scheren.
  3. expresses an unintended result with many otherwise non-reflexive and ergative verbs

Where this word comes from

From Middle Dutch sich, from Middle High German sich, from Old High German sih, from Proto-West Germanic *sik, from Proto-Germanic *sek. Old Dutch did not have a reflexive pronoun (only rarely in early Limburgish texts), but used the normal accusative pronoun (if necessary intensified by selven, cf. English himself). Although the use of zich in Holland-based Dutch was clearly triggered by written German, this development was assisted by the fact that the south-eastern dialects of Dutch had already adopted certain High German pronoun forms in much earlier times (cf. Limburgish ich, mich, dich, zich).

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zich studiozich workshello, zich

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.