he

Forms

hē m, hēo f, hit n; accusative hine, hī, hit; genitive his, hire, his; dative him, hire, him; plural nominative and accusative hī, genitive heora, dative him (late West Saxon).^[2] Many spellings occur: feminine hīo, hīe and Northumbrian hiu, hia; neuter hyt; accusative hiene; plural hīe, hȳ, hēo, genitive hiera, hiora, hyra.^[3][4] The vowel of hē was long only in stressed positions.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *hiʀ, from Proto-Germanic *hiz (“this”).^[1][5] The Proto-Germanic pronoun, “this”, is barely attested elsewhere: Gothic keeps it in fixed phrases, Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐌼𐌼𐌰 (himma) in “today”, Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐌽𐌰 (hina) in “to this day” and Gothic 𐌷𐌹𐍄𐌰 (hita) “hitherto”.^[6][7] In West Germanic it became the pronoun of the third person: Old Frisian hī, Old Saxon hē beside hī, Old Dutch hē.^[5][8]

Kroonen and Hogg and Fulk trace it to the Indo-European stem Proto-Indo-European *ḱi-, which Hogg and Fulk compare with Latin cis (“on this side”).^[6][7] The third-person pronoun of Gothic, 𐌹𐍃 (is), 𐌹𐍄𐌰 (ita), 𐍃𐌹 (si), comes instead from an *i- stem, like is;^[7] Old Norse shares the stem with h-.^[7] The neuter hit has the shape of the Gothic neuter, with the h- of the other forms added by analogy.^[9] Seebold holds that h- outside the masculine nominative singular spread by analogy in Anglo-Frisian;^[7] Hogg and Fulk point to the Gothic forms against this.^[7]

According to Hogg and Fulk, *hiz was lowered to *hez by the following *-z, which was then lost, an exception found only in the personal pronouns and hwā; the vowel was lengthened under stress.^[9] Ringe and Taylor count it among the monosyllables that lost word-final *-z with compensatory lengthening and, in Old English, lowering of *i, against Old High German, which kept *-z as r.^[5] The same stem is in the instrumental of hēodæġ (“today”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The pronoun is in the oldest copy of Cædmon's Hymn, the Northumbrian text added to the Moore Bede, written in or soon after 737: He aerist scop aelda barnum heben til hrofe “he first made heaven as a roof for the children of men”, said of God, the eci dryctin “eternal Lord” of the line before.^[10][11] The will of the reeve Abba of 833×839, a contemporary single sheet, has the masculine and the neuter: gif me God bearnes unnan wille, ðæt hit foe to londe æfter me “if God will grant me a child, that it succeed to the land after me”.^[12][11] The feminine heo is in the will of Ealdorman Alfred of 871×899, on a single sheet of the late ninth century.^[13][11]

Semantic evolution

The pronoun refers back to persons and to things, following the grammatical gender of the noun: hē for a masculine noun, so that hē can mean “it”.^[14][1] A male person named by a neuter noun, such as cild, may still be hē.^[3] Hit is also the subject of impersonal verbs, as in Ðá rínde hit “then it rained”, and the genitives his, hire, heora serve as possessives.^[14][15] The dative him is also used reflexively.^[15]

In early Middle English hē, hēo and the plural hīe could all come out as hē;^[16] Durkin suggests that the Norse-derived they spread partly because it restored the distinction of number.^[16] The new feminine she, first recorded as scœ in the mid-twelfth century, probably came from hēo, hīo and hīe, though its origin is much debated.^[17] The masculine lived on as Middle English he, now English he.^[18][19]

Timeline

• c. or after 737 – sue he uundra gihuaes … or astelidæ in Cædmon's Hymn in the Moore Bede.^[10][11]
• 833×839 – he and hit in the will of Abba, a contemporary single sheet.^[12][11]
• s. ix med. – in the Vespasian Psalter gloss.^[20][11]
• s. ix² – the feminine heo in the will of Ealdorman Alfred.^[13][11]
• 890×897 – the whole paradigm in the Pastoral Care (Hatton 20).^[21][11]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. he, of a male person.^[14][22]
2. it, of a thing named by a masculine noun.^[1][3]
3. feminine hēo: she; neuter hit: it, also with impersonal verbs.^[14][15]
4. plural hīe: they.^[14][15]
5. genitive his, hire, heora as a possessive: his, her, its, their.^[15][23]
6. dative him used reflexively: (to) himself.^[15]

Descendants

• Middle English he (→ English he; Scots he)^[1]

Related words

• hēr
• hēodæġ

Usage notes

In Beowulf hē occurs 285 times; the feminine hēo is found only in the part written by the first scribe, and hyt only in the second scribe's part.^[15] Enclitic forms must have existed but are not written down before Middle English.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.15
3. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 511
4. ^ a b c Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.17
5. ^ a b c Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 86
6. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 225
7. ^ a b c d e f Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.14
8. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
9. ^ a b Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.16
10. ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 60
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
12. ^ a b The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 1482
13. ^ a b The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 1508
14. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 512
15. ^ a b c d e f g Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. hē
16. ^ a b Durkin, Philip (2014), Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 177
17. ^ Durkin, Philip (2014), Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 179
18. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
19. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
20. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 329
21. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 499
22. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. hē
23. ^ Liebermann, F. (1906), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. II.1: Wörterbuch, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 111