Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English.
Note: 'Ourselves' is the first person plural reflexive pronoun.
1.
You use ~ to refer to yourself and one or more other people as a group.
We sat round the fire to keep ~ warm...
It was the first time we admitted to ~ that we were tired.
PRON: v PRON, prep PRON
2.
A speaker or writer sometimes uses ~ to refer to people in general. Ourselves is used as the object of a verb or preposition when the subject refers to the same people.
We all know that when we exert ~ our heart rate increases.
PRON: v PRON, prep PRON
3.
You use ~ to emphasize a first person plural subject. In more formal English, ~ is sometimes used instead of ‘us’ as the object of a verb or preposition, for emphasis.
Others are feeling just the way we ~ would feel in the same situation...
The people who will suffer won’t be people like ~.
PRON emphasis
4.
If you say something such as ‘We did it ~’, you are indicating that something was done by you and a particular group of other people, rather than anyone else.
We villagers built that ~, we had no help from anyone.
PRON