--- description: People have invented more than 200 gender-neutral pronouns, but 'they' is the one that has persisted. Here's why. title: People Have Invented More Than 200 Gender-Neutral Pronouns. Here's Why 'They' Is Here to Stay image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt65a25c0e0f995803/698a090a096a94b7dc6a79e6/dennis_baron_why_resistance_to_they_is_futile.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Books](/tag/books/) ## Books Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # People Have Invented More Than 200 Gender-Neutral Pronouns. Here's Why 'They' Is Here to Stay by [Katy Steinmetz](/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 17, 2020 9:29 PM CUT  by [Katy Steinmetz](/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jan 17, 2020 9:29 PM CUT It is a well-known truth among linguists that so long as English is changing — which it always is — there will be people who are belly-aching about it, warning that if things keep going as they are, the language will soon be on life support and, as likely as not, dead within the year. Critics feared for the future when people started using _contact_ as a verb in the 1920s and when they embraced text-speak like _OMG_ in the 2000s. And for centuries, they have lamented the usage of one pronoun in particular: [singular _they_](https://time.com/5748649/word-of-year-they-merriam-webster/ "undefined")_._ “Depending on who’s complaining,” writes linguistics scholar Dennis Baron, author of the forthcoming book [_What’s Your Pronoun?: Beyond He & She_](https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Your-Pronoun-Beyond-She/dp/1631496042 "undefined"), out Jan. 21, “singular _they_ is anything from a minor sin to evidence of complete illiteracy, moral decay, even the end of civilization as we know it.” Yet, rather than cleaving the societal fabric, the linguistic “mistakes” of one era often have a way of proving perfectly correct by the next. And Baron lays out a thorough argument that the tide has turned for singular _they_. “At this point,” he writes, “resistance is futile.” Why? Because necessity is the mother of adoption, and while debate about the word may seem new, singular _they_ has been on an “inexorable forward march,” as Baron puts it, since the Middle Ages. For centuries, poets and pundits have observed that English is missing a word: a gender-neutral, third-person pronoun that could be used in place of _he_ or _she_ when gender is unknown or irrelevant. _They_ has long been proposed as the answer: It’s a familiar word that happens to leave gender out of the frame. The masses regularly use it in a singular way in casual conversation, as in, “Did they leave a message?” or “They cut me off!” or “Pffffhhhh, I guess _they_ didn’t get the memo.” Writers, from Austen to Shakespeare, have used it too. But grammarians have considered singular _they_ unfit for print, holding fast to the rule that educated people use _they_ only as a plural and, therefore, helping to make this the case everywhere from the classroom to the op-ed column. In his book, Baron breaks down why no other word can fill the “pronoun gap” like _they_ can. Using _he_ to include both men and women doesn’t actually include women; it renders them linguistic understudies, invisible and secondary. In the past, the pronoun _he_ has even been used by lawyering types to exclude women from polls, professions and various legal privileges. To this day, Baron writes, “the constitutional meaning of _he_ remains far less certain than it should be.” Generic _she_, meanwhile, can feel political, which is great if one’s message is also political but potentially distracting if one’s message is not. Alternating _he_ and _she_ is confusing. Using both — as in _he or she_ and _him or her_ — is abhorred as clunky and tedious. _It_ is dehumanizing. And _one_ sounds pretentious. (See: the first sentence of this paragraph.) The last part of Baron’s book offers an unparalleled chronology of invented pronouns, more than 200 words that he collected during decades of research. Bent on avoiding singular _they_, English speakers have been proposing made-up words to fill the gap since 1770\. But trying to force people to adopt an invented word is like trying to make an airplane fly by yelling at it. Even the cleverest ones, like _thon_ (a combination of _that_ and _one_), didn’t take off. Gender-neutral neologisms like _ha_, _hizzer_, _E_, _shim_, _thare_, _um_ and _ita_ never even left the hangar. All the while singular _they_ has been lurking in the background. And now it’s moving to the fore. A driving force has been the LGBTQ community, which has embraced singular _they_ not only to include both men and women but also to refer to [non-binary](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nonbinary "undefined") [people](https://time.com/4703309/gender-sexuality-changing/ "undefined") who identify as neither. That has [added social conservatives](https://time.com/5748649/word-of-year-they-merriam-webster/ "undefined") to the word’s detractors, but has also given it steam. The new binary-busting usage made it the American Dialect Society’s “Word of the Year” [in 2015](https://time.com/4173992/word-of-the-year-2015-they/ "undefined") and then Merriam-Webster’s [in 2019](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/word-of-the-year/they "undefined"). It also helped inspire linguistic authorities to put down their red pens. In 2015, the Washington _Post_ copy desk [announced](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-post-drops-the-mike--and-the-hyphen-in-e-mail/2015/12/04/ccd6e33a-98fa-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb%5Fstory.html "undefined") that the paper would start allowing singular _they._ In 2017, the AP Stylebook [approved](https://blog.ap.org/products-and-services/making-a-case-for-a-singular-they "undefined") it “when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy.” The same year, the Chicago Manual of Style said that if an individual prefers to be referred to as _they_, then _they_ is the preferred style. And each evolution has added to the sense that this usage isn’t just convenient, it’s also grammatically okay. Bryan Garner, author of the famed usage guide _Garner’s Modern English Usage_, describes the word’s viral adoption in recent years as being, at least in part, the result of social pressure: In this case, the demands about what “ought” to be acceptable are coming from progressives rather than school teachers. Though he predicted in the ’90s that singular _they_ would prevail, he says he is surprised that LGBTQ rights proved the tipping point. “It used to be that the _he-or-she_ folks were progressive,” he writes to TIME, “now their ‘binary’ usage is considered distinctly unwoke.” Though [fights](https://twitter.com/kirbyconrod/status/1204829740462309376 "undefined") about the pronoun rage on in some corners, there’s a good chance our grandchildren will find it hard to believe singular _they_ was even a controversial thing. Consider a few other popular words that were once ugly ducklings. In the 1970s, the American Heritage Dictionary asked language experts if this new verb people were using, _prioritize_, was acceptable; 96.7% said no. In the 1990s, they were asked if a new usage of _grow_ — as in, “our strategy is to grow our business” — was okay; 80% said no. Back in the 1600s, _uninterested_ (indifferent) and _disinterested_ (impartial) had opposite meanings from what they do now. _Spitting image_, according to one theory, is a 20th-century corruption of _spit and image_ (from the notion that God made Adam in his likeness out of clay, which he made from spit and dust), yet one would be hard-pressed to find the “correct” version in print today. The most apt example, though, is _you_. This second-person pronoun was once used solely to refer to groups of people or the likes of a king. Eventually non-royal individuals started to see it as a respectful way to refer to one another as well, and despite much booing and hooing among those who would preserve _thou_, the practice took. “Variation and change are natural, normal and inevitable for any language,” Baron writes. They ain’t kidding. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5763175/they-as-singular-pronoun/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5763175/they-as-singular-pronoun/"},"headline":"People Have Invented More Than 200 Gender-Neutral Pronouns. Here's Why 'They' Is Here to Stay","datePublished":"2020-01-17T21:29:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-31T12:09:51.651Z","description":"People have invented more than 200 gender-neutral pronouns, but 'they' is the one that has persisted. Here's why.","url":"https://time.com/5763175/they-as-singular-pronoun/","keywords":["Books"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt65a25c0e0f995803/698a090a096a94b7dc6a79e6/dennis_baron_why_resistance_to_they_is_futile.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katy Steinmetz","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt65a25c0e0f995803/698a090a096a94b7dc6a79e6/dennis_baron_why_resistance_to_they_is_futile.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"dennis_baron_whats_your_pronoun","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/books/","name":"Books"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5763175/they-as-singular-pronoun/","name":"People Have Invented More Than 200 Gender-Neutral Pronouns. Here's Why 'They' Is Here to Stay"}}]}] ```