They
They is the subjective form of the third-person plural personal pronoun in Modern English, denoting two or more persons or things distinct from the speaker and addressee, with corresponding objective them and possessive their. Borrowed from Old Norse þeir around 1200 CE during the Danelaw period, it displaced the native Old English hīe or hie by circa 1400, providing clearer phonological distinction from singular he amid sound shifts that merged forms.[1] Historically employed in singular constructions since at least 1375 for indefinite antecedents—as in "Hastely hi arose... for thei had a greet affray" from the medieval romance William and the Werewolf—singular they appears in literature by Chaucer, Shakespeare (e.g., "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend"), and Austen, serving generic purposes like "someone lost their hat" without specifying gender or number precisely.[2][3] Its contemporary extension to definite singular reference, particularly for individuals rejecting binary sex-based pronouns, has provoked contention between descriptive linguists observing usage trends and prescriptive grammarians upholding number agreement as a core syntactic rule, citing ambiguities in verb conjugation (e.g., "they is/are"), reflexives (themself vs. themselves), and contextual clarity.[4][5] Eighteenth-century grammarians first condemned such singular they for violating antecedent-pronoun concordance, a critique echoed in formal style guides like Chicago and MLA that favor alternatives to avoid logical inconsistency, even as dictionaries like Merriam-Webster have descriptively endorsed it amid cultural shifts.[2][4] This evolution reflects not mere organic change but ideological advocacy prioritizing perceived inclusivity over established grammatical utility, with critics arguing it erodes precision without historical precedent for known specific referents.[4][6]Etymology and Forms
Morphological Structure
The English pronoun they derives from the Old Norse nominative plural þeir (or ðeir), borrowed during the Viking Age settlements and integrated into Middle English around the 12th to 13th centuries, displacing the native Old English third-person plural hīe or hēo.[1][7][8] This Scandinavian influence reflects phonetic and morphological assimilation, with they adopting the role of nominative subject for third-person plural reference. Morphologically, they functions as the nominative (subjective) case in the third-person plural paradigm, inflecting for case, possession, and reflexivity but not for gender or number in its base form.[9] The oblique (objective) form is them, used for accusative and dative functions; the possessive adjective is their, modifying nouns; the independent possessive pronoun is theirs; and the reflexive forms are themselves for plural or themself in singular-compatible uses.[9][10] These inflections exhibit analytic rather than synthetic marking typical of modern English pronouns, relying on distinct lexical roots rather than affixation, which originated in the Norse paradigm's own case distinctions.[1] The plural morphology of they has prompted historical prescriptive concerns over number agreement when extended to singular antecedents, as grammarians from the 18th century onward emphasized strict concord between antecedent number and pronoun form.[11][12]Declension and Variants
The third-person plural pronoun "they" follows a declension paradigm in modern English that distinguishes case through distinct forms, though English has largely lost inflectional endings compared to older Indo-European languages.[13]| Case/Form | Plural |
|---|---|
| Nominative (subject) | they |
| Accusative (direct object) | them |
| Dative (indirect object/prepositional) | them |
| Possessive adjective | their |
| Possessive pronoun | theirs |
| Reflexive/Intensive | themselves |