He (pronoun)

"He" is the masculine third-person, singular personal pronoun (nominative case) in Modern English. In traditional forms of English grammar it is also used as a gender-neutral third-person singular personal pronoun.

Usage

Original and modern scope

As in many languages, in Old English each noun had a grammatical gender (masculine, feminine or neuter), and a pronoun was generally (but not always) selected according to its antecedent's grammatical gender. Thus because dæg ([dæj] 'day') was masculine, one would refer to the day as he.[1][2] Since in Modern English nouns have no grammatical gender (though suffixes like -or or -ess may indicate the sex of their referents), only the sex of the referent determines the pronoun to use.

Generic pronoun

The generic he serves as a pronoun whose antecedent is any noun denoting a social category under which both sexes fall:

A good student always does his homework.
If someone asks you for help, give it to him.
When a customer argues, always agree with him.

Ann Fisher's first prescribed the generic he in her 1745 grammar book A New Grammar. It was thereafter often prescribed in manuals of style and school textbooks until around the 1960s.[3]

Other

In referring to their God or to Jesus Christ, and whenever referring to the Holy Spirit conceived on that occasion to be masculine, some Christians use the capitalized forms He, His, and Him.

Etymology

He has always been the third-person masculine pronoun in English, as this table of the pronouns of Old English shows:

Old English pronouns
			Nominative	IPA	Accusative	Dative	Genitive
1st	Singular		iċ	[ɪtʃ]	mec / mē	mē	mīn
	Dual		wit	[wɪt]	uncit	unc	uncer
	Plural		wē	[weː]	ūsic	ūs	ūser / ūre
2nd	Singular		þū	[θuː]	þec / þē	þē	þīn
	Dual		ġit	[jɪt]	incit	inc	incer
	Plural		ġē	[jeː]	ēowic	ēow	ēower
3rd	Singular	Masculine	hē	[heː]	hine	him	his
		Neuter	hit	[hɪt]	hit	him	his
		Feminine	hēo	[heːo]	hīe	hiere	hiere
	Plural		hīe	[hiːə]	hīe	heom	heora

Although the pronoun has always been spelled the same, its Old English pronunciation was closer to that of modern hay.

As the OE table shows, hine and him were respectively the accusative and dative cases of he. These oblique forms persisted in Middle English:

Personal pronouns in Middle English
Below each Middle English pronoun, the *Modern English is shown in italics* (with archaic forms in brackets)
Person / gender		Subject	Object	Possessive determiner	Possessive pronoun	Reflexive
Singular
First		ic / ich / I I	me / mi me	min / minen [pl.] my	min / mire / minre mine	min one / mi selven myself
Second		þou / þu / tu / þeou you (thou)	þe you (thee)	þi / ti your (thy)	þin / þyn yours (thine)	þeself / þi selven yourself (thyself)
Third	Masculine	he he	him[lower-alpha 1] / hine[lower-alpha 2] him	his / hisse / hes his	his / hisse his	him-seluen himself
	Feminine	sche[o] / s[c]ho / ȝho she	heo / his / hie / hies / hire her	hio / heo / hire / heore her	- hers	heo-seolf herself
	Neuter	hit it	hit / him it	his its	his its	hit sulue itself
Plural
First		we we	us / ous us	ure[n] / our[e] / ures / urne our	oures ours	us self / ous silve ourselves
Second		ȝe / ye you (ye)	eow / [ȝ]ou / ȝow / gu / you you	eower / [ȝ]ower / gur / [e]our your	youres yours	Ȝou self / ou selve yourselves
Third	From Old English	heo / he	his / heo[m]	heore / her	-	-
	From Old Norse	þa / þei / þeo / þo	þem / þo	þeir	-	þam-selue
	modern	they	them	their	theirs	themselves

Dative case, indirect object
Accusative case, direct object

Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources due to difference in spellings and pronunciations. See Francis Henry Stratmann (1891). A Middle-English dictionary. [London]: Oxford University Press. and A Concise Dictionary of Middle English from A.D. 1150 TO 1580, A. L. Mayhew, Walter W. Skeat, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888.

Hence in modern English the dative form him took on the accusative functions of accusative hine [hinə].

References

Peter S Baker, Introduction to Old English Archived 10 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
Greville Corbett, Gender, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Patricia T. O'Conner; Stewart Kellerman (21 July 2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times.

Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, Longman, 1985.

External links

William Malone Baskervill and James Witt Sewel, An English Grammar, 1896.
"He", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth edition, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).

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[4] Dative case, indirect object

[5] Accusative case, direct object

[1] Peter S Baker, Introduction to Old English Archived 10 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).

[2] Greville Corbett, Gender, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

[3] Patricia T. O'Conner; Stewart Kellerman (21 July 2009). "All-Purpose Pronoun". The New York Times.