When was it first used

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Singular they has become the pronoun of choice to replace he and she in cases where the gender of the antecedent — the word the pronoun refers to — is unknown, irrelevant, or nonbinary, or where gender needs to be concealed. The Oxford English Dictionary traces singular they back to , where it appears in the medieval romance William and the Werewolf.

Except for the old-style language of that poem, its use of singular they to refer to an unnamed person seems very modern. That makes an old form even older. They clearly forgot that singular you was a plural pronoun that had become singular as well.

You functioned as a polite singular for centuries, but in the seventeenth century singular you replaced thou, thee, and thy, except for some dialect use. That change met with some resistance. In , George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, wrote a whole book labeling anyone who used singular you an idiot or a fool.

Anyone who said thou and thee was seen as a fool and an idiot, or a Quaker, or at least hopelessly out of date. Singular you has become normal and unremarkable. This is usually done for one of two reasons: the source's copyright page provides a date range rather than a specific year; or the word appears as an entry in a reference work, indicating that it had been in use before that work's publication date.

A few classes of main entries that are not complete words such as abbreviations, prefixes, suffixes, and combining forms or are not generic words such as trademarks are not given dates. Log in Sign Up. Dates in the Merriam-Webster. It is essential to keep a few factors in mind when assessing the First Known Use Date: The date may not represent the very oldest sense of the word.