pronoun
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈpɹəʊnaʊn/
ipa: /ˈpɹoʊ.naʊn/
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈpronawn/
note: Indic
ipa: /prɵˈnawn/
rhymes: -əʊnaʊn
rhymes: -oʊnaʊn
Forms: form: pronouns
form: pronoune
Etymology: From pro- + noun, modeled on Middle French pronom, from Latin pronomen, itself a calque of Ancient Greek ᾰ̓ντωνῠμῐ́ᾱ (ăntōnŭmĭ́ā).
Senses: examples: text: The possessive conjunctive pronoun is always repeated before a substantive, and after a conjunction; as my brothers and sisters, mes frères & mes sœurs; […]
ref: 1789, Jean Baptiste, A grammar of the French tongue, page 193:
text: Dalia: Why are you playing the pronoun game?
Alyssa: What? What are you talking about? I'm not even.
Dalia: You are. "I met someone." "We have a great time. "They're from my home town." Doesn't this tube of wonderful have a name!
ref: 1997, Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy:
text: As here the possessive pronoun 'our' has inclusive reference in that it a priori includes both the editor and reader, its presence amounts to a kind of pronominal bonding between writer and reader.
ref: 2013, Nicholas Brownless, “Spoken Discourse in Early English Newspapers”, in Joad Raymond, editor, News Networks in Seventeenth Century Britain and Europe, page 72:
topics: grammar
human-sciences
linguistics
sciences
glosses: A type of word that refers anaphorically to a noun or noun phrase, but which cannot ordinarily be preceded by a determiner and rarely takes an attributive adjective.
examples: text: My pronouns are she/her. What are your pronouns?
text: The vast majority (82 percent) of the nonbinary trans students I interviewed used nonbinary pronouns for themselves, and all said that they were rarely given the opportunity to indicate their pronouns.
ref: 2019, Genny Beemyn, editor, Trans People in Higher Education, SUNY Press, →ISBN, page 178:
text: Then an earnest elaboration: “It’s just nice that other people understand what I’m thinking. I don’t have to explain a million things. I don’t have to be like, Okay, I guess I’ll let you ignore my pronouns. It’s a very good space.”
ref: 2023 August 31, Frankie de la Cretaz, “Postcard from Camp Gaylore”, in Cosmopolitan:
text: You can refuse to use pronouns and alternate names and still show love to your child. Be clear and succinct.
ref: 2023, Miriam Grossman, Lost in Trans Nation:
text: Abbott celebrated the move on X, sharing a report from the Austin American-Statesman on the firing and writing: “A Texas state employee refused to remove pronouns from email signature. He was fired before noon.”
ref: 2025 March 6, Erum Salam, quoting Greg Abbott, “Elon Musk and Texas governor celebrate firing of worker over pronouns in email signature”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:
glosses: Ellipsis of preferred pronoun, any of the third-person pronouns by which a person prefers to be referred to, typically reflecting their gender identity; often communicated as a subject–object pair.
Synonyms: word: pronoun
Hypernyms: word: part of speech
word: pro-form
word: word
Hyponyms: word: adjectival pronoun
word: substantival pronoun
word: demonstrative pronoun
word: emphasizing pronoun
word: indefinite pronoun
word: intensive pronoun
word: interrogative pronoun
word: object pronoun
word: personal pronoun
word: possessive pronoun
word: reciprocal pronoun
word: reflexive pronoun
word: relative pronoun
word: subject pronoun
Derived terms: word: adjectival pronoun
word: copy pronoun
word: demonstrative pronoun
word: determinative pronoun
word: donkey pronoun
word: dummy pronoun
word: emphasizing pronoun
word: emphatic pronoun
word: epicene pronoun
word: gender-neutral pronoun
word: indefinite pronoun
word: intensive pronoun
word: interrogative pronoun
word: neopronoun
word: noun-self pronoun
word: nounself pronoun
word: object pronoun
word: perpendicular pronoun
word: personal pronoun
word: play the pronoun game
word: possessive pronoun
word: prepositional pronoun
word: pronoun dance
word: pronoun demonstrative
word: reciprocal pronoun
word: possessive pronoun
word: relative pronoun
word: resumptive pronoun
word: shadow pronoun
word: Spivak pronoun
word: subject pronoun
word: substantival pronoun
word: substantive pronoun
word: weak pronoun
Related terms: pronominal