they is
(Dated: 1 April 2022) The pronoun ‘they’ seems deceptively simple at first glance - ask any eleven-year-old and he or she could tell you that it is used to refer to two or more people or objects. Or at least that might have been what was taught to them in school, and while it is not inherently wrong, our understanding of this pronoun has changed over the years, and in this modern day and age, ‘they’ carries a lot more weight than what meets the eye. The concept of singular ‘they’ has been around for centuries, with the Oxford English Dictionary tracing its roots back to 1375 in the poem Willam and the Werewolf , where it makes its appearance in reference to an unspecified person. Transcribed into modern English, it reads " Each man hurried . . . till they drew near . . . where William and his darling were lying together." This example shows that the idea of altering meanings of words to suit the writer’s needs was already present long before the language was developed into...
