y'allself
AAVE second-person plural reflexive pronoun meaning 'yourselves' — a natural extension of 'y'all' into reflexive territory.
Etymology timeline
Born ~1990 · no dated citations yetDefinitions
AAVE second-person plural reflexive pronoun meaning 'yourselves' — a natural extension of 'y'all' into reflexive territory. It fills a grammatical gap that standard English handles awkwardly ('yourselves' feels stiff; 'y'allself' flows). You'll hear it in everyday Southern and Black American speech: 'make y'allself at home,' 'help y'allself to some food.' It's intuitive, grammatically logical within the AAVE system, and captures the warmth of Southern hospitality speech perfectly. Social media has given it wider visibility beyond regional use.
Go on and help y'allself to the food — we cooked enough for the whole neighborhood.
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(AAVE) Yourselves.
"y'allself" comes from African-American Vernacular English or Multicultural London English and means yourselves. It has spread well beyond its origin through hip-hop, drill, TikTok and gaming, so a teen of any background may use it. It is not in itself a sign of bad behaviour; it is a style of speech the way 'cool' or 'wicked' once was. The conversation worth having is about respecting where the language comes from, not about banning the word.
"y'allself" is informal, ethnically marked slang English meaning yourselves. It is mainly used in North American English. A more formal or neutral equivalent would be something like "yourselves" expressed in standard vocabulary. A common mistake is to assume "y'allself" can replace its standard equivalent in every register; keep it for spoken or casual situations and use the formal form in writing. If you are a B2 or C1 learner, it is useful to recognise this word when you hear or read it, but think carefully about whether the situation really calls for it before using it yourself.
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🎤About Black culture & AAVE slang
Slang from Black American Vernacular English (AAVE), hip-hop, drag and ballroom culture, the Caribbean, and NYC street vocabulary. The single largest source of new mainstream English slang in living memory.
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- theyselves77%
A nonstandard or dialectal reflexive pronoun used in place of 'themselves,' common in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) and various regional dialects across the US and UK. It follows a consistent internal logic — paralleling 'myself,' 'yourself,' 'himself,' and 'herself' by using the subject pronoun form rather than the possessive. In AAVE in particular, it is a fully functional grammatical feature rather than an error, and appears in both spoken and written vernacular expression.
- theyself75%
Theyself is the AAVE reflexive form of the singular gender-neutral pronoun they — meaning themselves when referring to one person. As singular they has gone mainstream for gender-neutral reference, theyself offers a natural reflexive companion. It fills a genuine grammatical gap and reflects the organic way language communities adapt pronoun systems. You'll hear it in AAVE-rooted speech and increasingly in everyday informal English from younger speakers.
- y'all72%
Second-person plural pronoun — "you all." Quintessentially Southern American English; spreading nationally as a useful gender-neutral plural "you."
- ownself69%
(now, chiefly, regional, especially, southern US, Caribbean, Singlish) (One's) self; used with a preceding possessive adjective to form a pronominal phrase.