We

See also: Appendix:Variations of "we"

Translingual

Etymology

Clipping of English Weber.

Symbol

We

(fluid mechanics) Weber number

English

Pronoun

We

Honorific alternative letter-case form of of we, sometimes used when speaking as an important figure or figures.
- [1883 May, Minimum [pseudonym], “A Flying Dutchman”, in The Wheelman: An Illustrated Magazine of Cycling Literature and News, volume II, number 2, Boston, Mass.: The Wheelman Company […], →OCLC, chapter XIX (Touring), page 133, columns 1–2:
  “It seems to me that we are losing sight of the fact that we are artists,” said Miss Madder to Mr. Ehrlebach one evening about a week later, during one of his calls. / “We, with a capital ‘W,’” laughed Miss Larkin, mimicking Rose’s conscious air. / “Well, Mr. Ehrlebach is, anyway, and he ought to be doing some grave artistic studying.”]
- [1906, Mrs. Alec Tweedie [i.e., Ethel Brilliana Tweedie], “The Legislature and a Vice-President”, in Porfirio Diaz, Seven Times President of Mexico, London: Hurst and Blackett, […], →OCLC, page 390:
  Yet when Diaz talks one would think he had never achieved anything. He never uses the first pronoun singular, always speaking as “we,” but not the “we” with a capital W habitual to Royalty; just simply we, meaning others in preference to himself. That is why it has been so difficult to draw his picture, to show the modesty lying behind his giant strength.]
- 1964, Pope Paul VI, quotee, The Catholic Mind, New York, N.Y.: America Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 59:
  But meanwhile, We say frankly that so far We do not have sufficient reason to regard the norms given by Pope Pius XII in this matter as surpassed and therefore not binding; they must therefore be considered valid, at least until we feel in conscience bound to modify them.
- 1969 August 1, “Ad honorabiles Viros e publico Legumlatorum Coetu Reipublicae Ugandensis”, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis, volume LXI (overall work in Latin), Vatican City: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 580:
  It may be well to begin by introducing each other. Who are We? You are not, perhaps led astray by the opinion held of Us by certain contemporaries; We are a weak and little man like other men, perhaps more so than other men. Have under standing^[sic] for Our personal littleness. But We make so bold as to présent^[sic] Ourself to you under a twofold title: one title is Our own—it is the great love We have for Africa, for you, and for the Peoples you gövern^[sic] and represent; the other title is not Our own—it was conferred upon Us, and it makes Us humble and bold as We come among you: you know it well, it is the title of Pope, which means Father; and We inherited it from Saint Peter, whose unworthy but authentic successor We are.
- 2000, Ronald Turco, “Book”, in Walk East on Burnside, Portland, Ore.: Imago Books, →ISBN, page 135:
  “You mean it was luck?” replied Jason. / “Well…in a way,” replied Berger. “It really means more than that. In a sense, We with a capital “W” are favoring your undertakings. We are watching over all. God sees all. We see all.”
- [2019 November, Samuel Shem [pseudonym; Stephen Joseph Bergman], “The Sick Empire”, in Man’s 4th Best Hospital, New York, N.Y.: Berkley, →ISBN, page 319:
  “I too love it,” said Eddie. “Y’gotta be very delicate with cancer patients, and the ‘we’ works like a charm.” He seemed sincere. Naidoo looked worried. “I see the ‘we’ with a capital ‘W,’ the royal ‘We.’ My cancer patients can’t argue with King Eddie—”]
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- 1784, An Answer to the Reverend James Ramsay’s Essay, on the Treatment and Conversion of Slaves, in the British Sugar Colonies. […], Basseterre, St. Christopher: […] Edward L. Low, […], →OCLC, page 2:
  Had the Eſſayiſt on the treatment, &c. confined himſelf to the laws of God, and not deſtroyed his own argument for humanity, by going beyond thoſe laws and proving too much, […] We (for there is more than one perſon employed in this work, that it may be directed by public utility inſtead of private prejudice) would gladly have ſeconded his endeavours; […] For this purpoſe, We have already began to ſhew our humane care for theſe our fellow creatures, who, at preſent, are uſeful members of ſociety, but would not continue ſuch in any other rank of life; We ſome time ſince unanimouſly paſſed an act, […]
- 1914 February, R[obert] Hamilton Russell, “[Joseph] Lister: The Laboratory and the Beside. […]”, in Dawson Williams, Charles Louis Taylor, editors, The British Medical Journal. […], volume I, 1914, number 2779, London: […] British Medical Association, […], published 4 April 1914, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 745, columns 1–2:
  What always does occur to me, however, and must be vividly before the view of anybody who knew intimately the working of Lister’s mind, is that the contributions that “We” (with a capital W) have made independently of him towards the establishment of present-day surgical methods, do not after all amount to quite so much as we are prone to think.
- [1919 November, A. Bridges, “If I Were the Youngest Member of the Force—What I Would, and What I Would Not Do”, in T. M. Shearman, Raymond L. Shearman, editors, Hardware World, volume XIV, number 11, Portland, Ore.: Hardware World Publishing Co., →OCLC, page 116, column 2:
  I would get the habit of saying “We,” with a capital W, when speaking of the business, and of feeling that “WE,” from the top of my head to the soles of my feet. I would feel that if I made a mistake, it was not I alone that would be injured, but the business, of which I am part and parcel, even though my name does not yet appear on the list of stockholders.]
- 1955, Osmington Mills, chapter VII, in Unlucky Break, London: Geoffrey Bles […], →OCLC, pages 71–72:
  You see, Hampshire is by no means the only county to have its Loyal Sons, and it is rather worrying for our respectable superiors to discover that several fellow-members of their clubs are busy at home in the country banding themsleves^[sic] into incipient Klu Klux Klans. I gather, by the way, that not many of them areas rabid as Hampshire, which We with a capital W attribute to the resentment felt about people setting fire to the ships of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth periodically.
- 1983 April 21, Sam Nunn, quotee, “Nominations—General Wickham: United States Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, DC”, in John A. Wickham, Jr., Collected Works of the Thirtieth Chief of Staff, United States Army, [Washington, D.C.]: [United States Department of the Army], →OCLC, page 6, column 1:
  We don’t have enough platforms to be able to consider ourselves at least quantitatively equal to the Warsaw Pact, and I say “We" with a capital W, in NATO. That means planes and tanks, as platforms.
- [1985 February 4, Sam Nunn, quotee, Department of Defense Authorization for Appropriations for Fiscal Year 1986: Hearings Before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, Ninety-ninth Congress, First Session, on S. 674 […], part 1 (U.S. Military Posture), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 10:
  I say that “We” with a capital “W,” all of us, Congress, the administration, the Secretary, share that responsibility.]
- 1989, Jürgen Habermas, translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen, “Work and Weltanschauung: The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective”, in The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians’ Debate, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, →ISBN, page 151:
  This standard is liquidated and along with it the critical moment of Being and Time provided by the individualistic heritage of existential philosophy. The concept of truth is then transformed so that historical challenge through a collective fate takes over. Now it is a “people” and no longer the individual, which ek-sists. Not we as individuals, but We with a capital W see ourselves exposed to the “need of turning” and the “prevailing of the mystery.”
- 1989, Trinh T[hi] Minh-ha, “A Western Science of man”, in Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, →ISBN, section II (The Language of Nativism: Anthropology as a Scientific Conversation of Man with Man), page 58:
  Don’t complain of being alienated, for it is We who undergo the “true,” quintessential alienation, We whose faith in our profession robs us of our being and reduces us into a being nothing.
- 1999, Justin Richards, “Transcript of Watkinson’s Final Lecture (Extract)”, in Tears of the Oracle (The New Adventures), London: NA, →ISBN, pages 220–221:
  The second [constant] is survival. That much is perhaps obvious to everyone. Every action we take is with the basic understanding that We (with a capital ‘W’) need to survive. […] Please note, by the way, that I am speaking still with that capital ‘W’. I am giving you my opinion of the most extensive driving forces behind the instinctive behaviour of intelligent species.
- 2000, Duong Bich Hanh, “Vietnam’s Minorities Policy: Strategic Promises and Ultimate Design”, in Geoffrey B. Hainsworth, editor, Globalization and the Asian Economic Crisis: Indigenous Responses, Coping Strategies, and Governance Reform in Southeast Asia, Vancouver, B.C.: Centre for Southeast Asia Research, Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia, →ISBN, part II (Ethnic Minorities: Assimilation, Marginalization, and Cultural Adaptation), page 146:
  [T]he Vietnamese court excluded the minority population and only maintained a tribute-collecting relationship with these groups, who at the time saw themselves as very much a distinct “we” in contrast to the Vietnamese “they.” […] However, in the official National History (to use Duara’s term), these different people are generalized as “We,” with a capital W. Ethnic groups became integral parts of the heterogeneous society which is then claimed to be a unified whole.
- 2000, Shin Ohara, “We-Consciousness and Terminal Patients: Some Biomedical Reflections on Japanese Civil Religion”, in Gerhold K. Becker, editor, The Moral Status of Persons: Perspectives on Bioethics (Value Inquiry Book Series; 96), Amsterdam; Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, →ISBN, part II (Eastern Perspectives on Personhood), page 122:
  Thus the “I-we” relationship centered around family members and close friends constitutes what I call “we” with a small w: it does not extend to a more public social consciousness that embraces “We” with a capital W.
- 2001, Yitzchak Reuven Rubin, A Rabbi’s Journal, volume 2, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Publications, →ISBN, page 102:
  Anger, our Sages tell us, is like idol worship. The cause of our anger is forgetting Hashem’s dominion over the world. We — with a capital W — feel insulted. The idol we are worshiping is the one we’ve created in our own image.
- [2002, Charlie Wayne Gill II, chapter 11, in Travels with Brother Retter: A Targum on Mark, Baltimore, Md.: AmErica House, →ISBN, page 124:
  The buck stops here. With us it is: morality is tough. Morality is difficult. Morality is for us. We, and that is we with a capital ‘W,’ are called to heal and transform the world, and we start with ourselves.]
- [2010, Birch Bayh, “Reflection: Remarks from Senator Birch Bayh”, in Fordham Law Review‎^[1], volume 79, number 3, New York, N.Y.: Fordham University School of Law, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2025-03-09, page 1092:
  So what we tried to do—and I say “we” with a capital “W”—was to put down a formula that could be studied in advance of any catastrophe, taking into consideration the information and the memories we had of assassinations and illnesses, and then tried to put down a prescription that would pass muster for future situations.]
- 2011 January 18, K.W. Moak, chapter 11, in Discontinuum, Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN:
  For Us, though, that was all just metasensory background: the real event was purely cognitive. APN fusion removed every taken-for-granted barrier separating our (small o) thoughts and feelings. It didn’t erase our identities by any means: We (capital W) comprised two perfectly distinct beings- EdwardPru and PruEdward- thinking and emoting independently, but the entity experiencing those noumena was Us.
- 2014 October 22, Joe Mendez, “Reunión de Esquio”, in Regresando (overall work in Spanish), Bloomington, Ind.: Palibrio, →ISBN:
  A child of a peasant, dressed in tatters, said to her mother / ‘All that matters, / Is that We are all Sneetches, / Sneetches in distress, / We are nothing more / We are nothing less.”
- [2020, Paige Penning, “Livia Lavender: Rancher, Writer, Dancer, but foremost a Horned Frog”, in Bob Schieffer College of Communication‎^[2], Fort Worth, Tex.: Texas Christian University, archived from the original on 2021-03-03:
  “We bleed purple, and I say we with a capital W because every TCU student is so proud and has so much love for our little campus,” she said.]
- 2024, Mark Freeman, “The (Al)lure of Narrative: Information, Misinformation, and Disinformation in the Time of Coronavirus”, in Martin Dege, Irene Strasser, editors, Narrative in Crisis: Reflections from the Limits of Storytelling (Explorations in Narrative Psychology), New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 26:
  [W]e who are constituted as the Them become reified into another Us, such that they become demonized, blanketed by our own modes of othering—which, I hate to admit, can be as narratively resistant and recalcitrant as that which we deplore. […] Instead, I want to think about all this more, carefully and candidly and, if possible, compassionately, in the hope that it might ultimately lead me and others of my kind—as well as Them—beyond the despair and hostility and rage We (capital W) often feel.