themselves is the most idiomatic option here, and doesn't sound at all furchtbar to me -- it sounds like standard English :)

edit to add that someone somewhere will disagree strongly with this (especially it not sounding furchtbar), but there is no denying that this has become pretty standard usage

Agree with #7 paousek. However furchtbar it may sound to linguists's ears, it is perfectly idiomatic English.

Despite objections, there is a trend to use ‘singular they’. In fact, it is historically long established. It goes back at least to the 16th century, and writers such as Shakespeare, Sidney, Byron, and Ruskin used it:

Singular "they" is closely related to this topic.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/grammar/usi...

I would go for

in order to make someone feel better about themself

... as the least inelegant way around the problem

Das hat weniger mit 'Deutsch-Muttersprachlerin' zu tun, denke ich, als damit, in welchem Maß man Englisch ausgesetzt ist. Es haben ja diverse DMS hier im Faden gesagt, dass es ihnen überhaupt nicht aufgefallen ist. (Dem ich mich anschließe - ich wusste auch nicht, wo das Problem mit dem Satz sein sollte.)

themself dagegen ist für mich eher ein Stolperstein. Da bin ich noch nicht dran gewöhnt, und zumindest in BE, bilde ich mir ein, lese ich es (noch?) sehr viel seltener.

Can I just say in that case that 'themselves' with a singular referent is really, really jarring, surely in BE as well as AE.

No, to me it's not jarring. As Bubb said: I don't even notice it.

Do you feel the same about just 'them' or 'their'? 'Everybody wants their cake and eat it'?

## 15, 16, 18: ... 'themselves' with a singular referent is really, really jarring, surely in BE ...

No, it really isn't, at least not to most of us.

And I would not advocate "themself". In my view that just sounds peculiar.

If you really don't like "themselves" (or if the text is a rather formal one), then you just have to find a different way round it.

That doesn't actually seem too hard to me.

Can you explain what you mean by that? I take it you don't think I didn't understand why you think 'themself' is 'better', for want of another word.

why not also in the reflexive form?

I can obviously only speak for myself, but I have nothing against 'themself', in theory. I'm just not used to it, whereas 'themselves' with a singular subject is perfectly normal to me. This might well change if 'themself' catches on, but so far it's still something that looks weird to me, unlike the very common 'themselves'.

We are talking in this thread about a "Minimalinvasion". Unlike Gibson, I think "themselves" with a singular subject is jarring and I would try to rephrase the whole thing, if it were me, to avoid these clumsy gender-neutral forms, but that is no consequence here. If obliged to make only minimal changes, I would decline this third-person singular phrase as follows:

... in order to make someone feel better about themself...

or

... in order to make people feel better about themselves...

edit: Just did a search and found that "themself" meets with escoville's approval, and I suspect he's even older than I am ;-)

related discussion: themself

in order to make people feel better about themselves...

Genau diesen minimalinvasiven Gedanken hatte ich auch.

Interessant, die unterschiedlichen Reaktionen und Einschätzungen zu lesen, aber jetzt mache ich Feierabend für heute.

Danke und gute Nacht!