who
Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Etymology
Old English hwā (dative hwām, genitive hwæs), from Proto-Germanic *khwas, *khwes, *khwo, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos.
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Pronoun
who singular or plural, nominative case (possessive whose, objective case whom, or who)
(Note that who is usually used instead of whom, especially in informal contexts.)
- (interrogative pronoun) What person or people; which person or people (used in a direct or indirect question).
- Who is that? (direct question)
- I don't know who it is. (indirect question)
- (relative pronoun) The person or people that.
- It was a nice man who helped us.
[edit] Usage notes
Whom is an object pronoun, while who is both a subject and object pronoun. One would never use whom as the subject of a verb though who is commonly used as an object. One method to use to determine correctness of who vs. whom is to rephrase the sentence to eliminate who or whom in favor of he, him, she, her, they or them. If you would have used he, she, or they, in place of the word, then who is the correct word; if you would have used him, her, or them, then either who or whom is correct. The exception is when it is the object of a fronted prepositional phrase in a question or relative clause, in which case whom is almost always used (e.g., With whom (not who) did you go?).
This also applies for whoever and whomever, in which if you would replace that word with 'he' or 'she', then 'who' or 'whoever' is the correct word; if you would use 'him' or 'her' instead, then 'whom' or 'whomever' is correct.
In the Mamas & The Papas song Go where you wanna go there is a line, You gotta go where you wanna go, Do what you wanna do With whomever you want to do it, babe. We can rephrase the end of this sentence correctly as "with him or her, babe". We cannot correctly rephrase the sentence as "with he or she, babe" and thus, "whomever" was correct in the line of that song.
[edit] Translations
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