she

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English sche, also scæ, scho and sho,^[2][3] and how it arose is much debated.^[4][5] The current OED, the MED, Hoad, the Shorter Oxford, Ayto and Wiktionary take it as probably a development of the old feminine pronoun, inherited from Old English hēo, also hīo, the feminine of he, which survives in dialect as hoo.^{[5][2][3][6][7][1]} On this view the stress in the diphthong shifted in late Old English, and the first sound passed from /h/ through a palatal fricative /ç/, shown by spellings such as ȝo and ȝho, to /ʃ/.^[2][5] The OED, revising the entry in 2013, argues that the new forms spread to keep the feminine apart from the masculine pronoun, and that this observed spread, with /h/ giving way first to /ç/ and then to /ʃ/, is strong evidence against the rival view; it holds that the likeness of the word to Old Dutch sie, Old Saxon siu, Old High German siu and Gothic 𐍃𐌹 (si) is probably coincidence.^[5] The change has few parallels in English, so some scholars see the speech habits of western Scandinavian speakers behind it, comparing Shetland from Old Norse Hjaltland;^[5][4][1] the OED sets against this the /ʃ/ of modern Scots pronunciations of huge and hook,^[5] while Barnhart objects that no example of the change is known in English.^[4] Wiktionary carries the old feminine pronoun back through Proto-West Germanic *hiju and Proto-Germanic *hijō to Proto-Indo-European *ḱe- (“this, here”).^[1] The rival explanation, held by Barnhart, the American Heritage Dictionary, Etymonline, Dictionary.com, Skeat and Weekley, derives the word from sēo, also sīo, the feminine of the demonstrative se, the.^{[4][8][9][10][11][12]} On this view sound changes made the old feminine pronoun and hē almost identical in speech, so the demonstrative was taken over as the pronoun,^[4][9][12] as in Dutch zij, German sie and Ancient Greek ἡ (hē),^[9][12] perhaps helped by Old Norse sjá (“this”).^[4][11] Etymonline traces the demonstrative to Proto-Indo-European *so- (“this, that”),^[9] and Collins starts from its accusative, sīe.^[13] Wiktionary regards this derivation as possible but less likely.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The female person referred to: probably before 1160, in the Peterborough continuation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, under the year 1140: “God wimman scæ wæs, oc scæ hedde litel blisse mid him”.^[5][2] Etymonline dates it to the mid-12th century,^[9] and Barnhart gives the spelling she from about 1250, in The Story of Genesis and Exodus.^[4]

Semantic evolution

In Middle English the east Midlands used scæ and later sche, while scho, sho and forms like ȝho ran alongside them,^[3] and hoo held out in the dialects of the Manchester area.^[9][6] Scots and northern dialects kept scho, sho, shoo and shu into the 19th century, in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Shetland among others.^[14] The pronoun spread from women to animals (before 1382), to objects such as ships (about 1380), to natural things such as the moon (about 1392), and to personified places and institutions (before 1450).^[5] Barbour already used scho of a ship, although according to Weekley he was more usual for ships in the 16th and 17th centuries.^[12] In early use it could also refer to a thing simply because its name was grammatically feminine.^[5][6] Australian and New Zealand colloquial speech has used it since 1863 for things not normally given a gender, especially a state of affairs: she'll be right.^[5][6][13] From 1908 it is also recorded for a person of unspecified sex.^[5] As a noun, "a woman or female", it dates from before 1325, in the Cursor Mundi,^[4][9] where animals are called "bath sco and he";^[12] Shakespeare has "the cruell'st she alive" (1600).^[15][16] Used before animal names (she-wolf), it dates from the late 14th century,^[9] and the gender-neutral written form s/he is recorded by 1977.^[9] Non-subject uses also occur: as an objective form from the mid-16th century, and as a possessive in Black English, chiefly in the West Indies, from the late 19th century.^[6]

Timeline

• probably before 1160 – the female person referred to, as scæ.^[5][2]
• c. 1250 – the spelling she.^[4]
• c. 1300 – sho.^[4]
• before 1325 – noun, a woman or female.^[4]
• c. 1380 – of ships and other artefacts.^[5]
• before 1382 – of animals.^[5]
• c. 1392 – of natural things such as the moon.^[5]
• before 1450 – of personified abstractions, cities, countries and the Church.^[5]
• 1863 – colloquial, in Australia and New Zealand, of a state of affairs.^[5]
• 1908 – of a person of undetermined sex.^[5]
• 1977 – the written form s/he.^[9]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. The woman, girl or female animal already mentioned or understood, as the subject of a verb: She teaches chemistry at the village school.^[13][16][5]
2. A thing regarded as female, especially a ship, a vehicle, a country or the moon: The old sloop is small, but she handles well.^[13][16][5]
3. (Australia and New Zealand, informal) It; the situation: she'll be right.^[13][5][6]
4. A person of unspecified sex.^[5][6]

Noun

1. A female person or animal, or a woman: Is the kitten a he or a she?^[13][16][15]
2. In compounds, a plant thought to resemble a different, better species: she-oak.^[16]

Adjective

1. Female, now chiefly of animals, and usually hyphenated with the noun: a she-wolf.^[6][13]

Word family

• she-cat
• she-oak
• she-wolf

Related words

• he
• her
• hers
• the
• hoo

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e 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)
3. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b c d e Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ a b c d e f g Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
14. ^ 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 Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
16. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster