he

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English he, inherited from Old English hē,^[2][3][4] from Proto-Germanic *hiz (“this, this one”),^[1] a demonstrative whose stem Kroonen, Etymonline and Barnhart give as *hi- (“this, these”).^[5][6][7] It is cognate with Old Frisian hī and hē, Old Dutch hē, Old Saxon hē, Dutch hij and the rare Old High German hē and her.^[8][7] The OED explains that the Old English forms show a stem *hi- with endings close to those of the demonstrative sē, and that the third-person pronouns of the Germanic languages probably grew out of demonstratives or deictics, although how they are related is uncertain.^[8] Gothic kept a dative, an accusative and a neuter of the rare pronoun, used only in expressions of time.^[5][8] Further back the stem goes to Proto-Indo-European *ḱís (“this”),^[1] part of the base that Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary give as *ko- (“this, here”),^[6][3] also seen in Latin cis (“on this side”), Lithuanian šis (“this”) and Hittite ki (“this”).^[7][9][8] The same stem gave him, his, it, here, hence and hither,^[10][7][9] and the first part of German heute (“today”) and Old English hēodæg (“today”).^[6][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The male person just mentioned: Barnhart dates the word to about 725,^[7] and the OED's first record is the early Old English manuscript of Cædmon's Hymn.^[8] Merriam-Webster says only that it is older than the 12th century.^[2]

Semantic evolution

In Old English he was the nominative of a full set of third-person forms: masculine he, hine, his, him, feminine heo or hio, neuter hit.^[6] The word was already used of animals in Beowulf, and of things personified or grammatically masculine in King Alfred's Boethius.^[8] It could also refer back to a noun or pronoun of undetermined gender, as in Ælfric's homilies, a generic use now widely avoided.^[8][11] The feminine forms fell out of use in early Middle English and were partly replaced by forms from other stems (see she), and hit lost its h- to become it.^[6][7] The redundant use after a noun ("the skipper he stood") goes back to Old English and is now chiefly regional or nonstandard.^[8][6][12] As a noun for a male the word dates from about 950,^[7] and it marks the male of animals, as in he-goat, from about 1300.^[6] Johnson (1755) defined it as "the man that was named before".^[13] Since 1562 it has stood for him in literary English, by hypercorrection, and later as the emphatic object in south-western England and the ordinary object in the Caribbean.^[8] Dialects stretched it further: for a woman or for either sex (Northamptonshire, 1851),^[8] for it in Hampshire, for a cow regardless of sex in south Pembrokeshire,^[14] and for you in commands and questions in the north of England and in American regional speech.^[8] In Cheshire a superior might address an inferior as he.^[14] In slang it has meant the penis, personified since Nashe in 1593,^[15] and since 1961 lesbians have used it of one another, as gay men use she.^[15]

Timeline

• c. 725 – third-person pronoun for a man already mentioned.^[7][8]
• Old English – of an animal, and of something personified or grammatically masculine.^[8]
• c. 950 – noun, a male.^[7]
• c. 1300 – marking the male of an animal, as in he-goat.^[6]
• 1562 – used for him, in literary writing.^[8]
• 1593 – slang, the penis.^[15]
• 1740 – verb, to speak to or of someone as "he".^[8]
• c. 1757 – regional, you in commands and questions.^[8]
• 1851 – regional, of a female or of either sex.^[8]
• 1961 – slang, used by lesbians of one another.^[15]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. Refers to a male person or animal already mentioned or easily identified: Ask Tom whether he wants a lift.^[16][3][8]
2. Refers to something personified as male, or, often with a capital, to God.^[8][2]
3. Refers to a person or animal of unknown or unspecified sex; now largely avoided: Each voter must show his card, and he may then go in.^[16][3][11]
4. Any person, as in phrases of the type he who….^[3][11]

Noun

1. A male person or animal, often in combination: That kitten is a he., he-goat.^[3][16][2]
2. (chiefly in combination) Someone or something strongly masculine, as in he-man.^[2]
3. The children's game in which one player chases and tries to touch the others.^[16]

Verb

1. To speak to or of someone as "he".^[8]

Word family

• he'd
• s/he
• he/she

Related words

• him
• his
• her
• it
• she
• here
• hence
• hither

Usage notes

Traditionally he, his and him were used generically after words such as anyone or writer; this is often criticised as sexist and is now largely replaced by he or she, they or a plural.^[4][11][3] Blends such as s/he have not caught on, probably because it isn't clear how to say them.^[4] The pronoun has the strong form /hiː/, used for contrast, and the weak forms /hi/ and /i/.^[17] The laughter of he, he is a separate imitative formation, recorded from Ælfric's Grammar.^[8][9][18] The name of the fifth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, also spelled he and first recorded about 1567, is taken from Hebrew and is perhaps literally "window".^[2][19]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
3. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
5. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
10. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b c d Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
14. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
15. ^ a b c d Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
16. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
17. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
18. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
19. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.