Talk:One (pronoun)

message: Is one a third person pronoun, I would say it was 1st person as the auther incluses themself, like a general form of we, although it does take the 3rd person sing. form of a verb... Any thoughts? MHDIV  ɪŋglɪʃnɜː(r)d(Suggestion?|wanna chat?) 11:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1st/3rd person 

message: I have never seen the possessive form ones except as a typo. Americans have enough difficulty remembering that the possessive form of it is its I have seen the word ones and its possessive ones' in some contexts, as in short for one-dollar bills. such expressions as young ones (children), and ones' place 
: "In the number 2183.405, the digit 3 is in the ones'  place" 
The word one has not yet become fully pronominal because it has other uses, such as the number itself. It is in contrast with French on and German man, cognates of nouns homme and Mann, respectively.
--Paul from Michigan 07:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possessive form 

message: The English language has yet to standardize forms for the indefinite person. Under some circumstances, the use of "one" could be pompous, especially when used as a circumlocution for the first-person singular or first-person plural. Allowing for its indefinite quality with respect to animacy, it seems less awkward than any other expression of gender-free language. 
The expression "a person", as it appears in the scene in Guys and Dolls as Adelaide sings about the symptons of the common cold, is pompous (note that her character displays the non-standard  confusion of the "oi" and "er" sounds suggests that she is semi-literate).
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Paul from Michigan (talk • contribs) 02:36, 14 January 2007
The Style section refers to Elizabeth II as "using one in this way", referring to the sentence: "If one chooses to disobey the rules, one must be dealt with.". It is not clear from the text what she is accused of meaning here. As above, she may mean 'I' - which is the usual criticism, or something else. Myrvin (talk) 14:41, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Formality and Pomposity 

message: I don't quite understand the point of this example under reflexives. It follows a sentence about ambiguous context, but I don't understand how this particular sentence could be interpreted any other way. The only two parsings I can come up with resolve to it being understood as indicating the number one.--Shadowdrak 18:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here, I came up with an example to illustrate the ambiguity. We could use the sentences, "If one chooses to disobey the rules, one must be dealt with.", "If only one case is important, only one must be dealt with.", "If an attorney is required, one must be dealt with." I think perhaps this illustrates the distinction well given pretty similar wording, and in each case "one" has a slightly different meaning.--Shadowdrak 18:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, the previous example was strange. Yours is much better. Er, no offence, but I'd like to scrap that too: it looks to me like very obviously avoidable poor writing. (Why not: Somebody who chooses to disobey the rules must be dealt with or One of the rules absolutely must be dealt with?) I don't see how it's informative to point out that this or that word can be sloppily used. (If there were an attested example of ambiguity, e.g. a fatally misread telegram, that would be a different matter.) -- Hoary 10:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  I borrowed one 

message: Which recent theoretical or advanced descriptive treatment of English talks of ditransitive verbs as taking something in dative case? -- Hoary 10:53, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: "Dative"

message: as it regards to the word one itself, as a word......
I think something like 
"One's job should always be taken seriously"
or something like that, would be clearer.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.173.126.176 (talk) 12:47, 8 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  the last example is a bit confusing 

message: The article currently states:
Some people find the repetitive use of "one" to be stilted so they will use generic "he":
"One can glean from this whatever he may."
"If one were to look at himself, he would see..."
This is considered to be very correct, formal English, but is sometimes cast as sexist. It is strictly stylistic, though if one should want to use it.
I'm a native user of British English, and the use of 'he' to succeed 'one' for the sake of variation seems to me to be entirely incorrect, regardless of issues of apparent sexism. In my experience such a construction is used only by non-British English writers, especially Americans, and a few ill-educated British English writers who ape American uses. 'He' and 'one' are certainly not interchangeable willy-nilly: I've never seen anyone use the reverse switch (*He can glean from this whatever one may.) as elegant variation.
I believe that, at least in British English, the rule is: if you start with 'one', stick with it. If you use generic 'he', stick with it. Don't switch horses in mid-stream!
One can glean from this whatever one may. / He can glean from this whatever he may.
If one were to look at oneself, one would see... / If he were to look at himself, he would see...
--Kay Dekker (talk) 21:50, 23 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "One ... he ..." construction. 

message: Homo-, properly pronounced 'omo' (short for 'omos') is from Greek meaning "the same" or more informally as "the one".
The derivation does not originate from Latin but rather is a common word used from Hellenika (Greek) and is shared in Latin lexicon. 
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homo  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.183.31.18 (talk) 04:53, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  "(H)omos" 

message: Impersonal pronoun currently redirects to this article, but probably shouldn't.  See:
* 
* —2606:A000:4C0C:E200:ACE5:1011:8E:599C (talk) 23:08, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: On the other hand, searching Google Books for "impersonal pronoun" seems to turn up mostly cases where it refers to "one" or its equivalents in other languages. In any case, it should probably have its own article, or even be a disambiguation page since it appears to have more than one distinct meaning. W. P. Uzer (talk) 08:56, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Agree; its own article would be best (but that is outside my purview). 2606:A000:4C0C:E200:ACE5:1011:8E:599C (talk) 18:44, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Impersonal pronoun 

message: One ought to see that this 'one' is a distinct word separate from all other ones. It comes from the Germanic (Franconian) man, translated into Latin/French homine/homme, which means 'man'. The Franks ruled France and even gave their name to the country, but took the romance kanguage, French, as their own in France. On is the modern form of the pronoun 'one' and was brought to England by the Normans. Its grammatical usage, meaning, end even its etymology is unique in English. All other meanings of 'one' are unrelated.
On doit voir....  Man soll sehen....
Please someone find specific sources on this and update this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.168.117.154 (talk) 18:01, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:NOT#FORUM.  This page is not a webboard for airing personal etymological theories.  If you think it's sourceable, find and bring the sources.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:06, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is all so obvious 

message: you added a ref with the name ":0", but forgot to fill it in. Could you please add your intended source? Thanks. -- Fyrael (talk) 19:49, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undefined ref