ellesmêmes

Elles-mêmes is the emphatic form of the feminine plural pronoun elles in French. It combines the subject pronoun elles with the intensive particle mêmes to stress that the action or quality belongs to the group itself, rather than to someone else. The form is used both as a pronoun and as a complement to emphasize a noun or pronoun already mentioned.

The standard spelling is elles-mêmes, with a hyphen. The second element, mêmes, agrees in gender and number with the subject elles (feminine plural). Related emphatic forms exist for other persons and genders, such as moi-même, toi-même, elle-même, nous-mêmes, vous-mêmes, eux-mêmes, and lui-même, elle-même for singular references. These forms share the same function of emphasis or self-assertion.

Usage notes: elles-mêmes is common in formal and literary contexts, or in spoken language for contrast or clarification. It typically appears after the verb or at the end of a clause, often set off by commas for emphasis, or used in apposition: for example, Elles ont pris la décision elles-mêmes or Eux-mêmes ont corrigé les erreurs. It can also serve to stress that a group acted without outside help: Elles-mêmes l’ont construit sans aide.

Meaning and nuance: the phrase signals responsibility or agency by the group in question. It does not alter the syntactic role of elles in the sentence; rather, it adds a emphasis that the subject acted independently or is being asserted as the source of the action.