He

1 a very light colorless element that is one of the six inert gasses; the most difficult gas to liquefy; occurs in economically extractable amounts in certain natural gases (as those found in Texas and Kansas) [syn: helium, atomic number 2]

2 the 5th letter of the Hebrew alphabet

Translingual

Etymology 1

From Hebrew

Symbol

1. In the context of "linguistics|computing": ISO 639-1 code for Hebrew.

Etymology 2

Transliteration of various Semitic letters, including sc=Phnx, sc=Hebr, and Syriac sc=Syrc.

Pronunciation

• /heɪ:/, /he:/

Noun

1. The name of sc=Phnx, the fifth letter of the Phoenician alphabet (

Quotations

Translations

Breton

Pronoun

1. her

Usage notes

• he zad - her father

Dutch

Interjection

1. Said when surprised or when objecting to something.

Finnish

Pronunciation

• Hyphenation: he
• Rhymes: -e
• lang=fi|[he]

Pronoun

1. they i only of people.

Declension

• Irregular. The comitative and instructive forms don't exist; the abessive is hardly used.
• In addition to the standard set of cases, he and other personal pronouns have a specific accusative form; heidät.

Usage notes

• In standard Finnish, he can practically never be omitted, despite the verb showing both the person and the number. (compare the usage of hän, "she" / "he")

Synonyms

• i-c dialectal het
• i-c dialectal hyö
• i-c colloquial ne

See also

• minä
• sinä
• hän
• me
• te

Japanese

Noun

1. 屁: fart

Mandarin

Verb

1. 喝: drink

   he tai duo kafei dui shenti bu hao. "To drink coffee too much is bad for health."

Conjunction

1. 和: and

   Jiǎntǐzì shì Zhōngguó hé Liánhéguó de biāozhǔn Hànzì. (简体字是中国和联合国的标准汉字.) — Jiantizi is the standard Hanzi of China and the UN.

Pinyin syllable

he

1. A transliteration of any of a number of Chinese characters properly represented as having one of four tones, hē, hé, hě, or hè.

Usage notes

English transcriptions of Chinese speech often fail to distinguish between the critical tonal differences employed in the Chinese language, using words such as this one without the appropriate indication of tone.

Old English

Etymology

Cognate with Old Frisian hi, he, Old Saxon hi, he.

Pronunciation

• /he:/

Pronoun

1. he

Descendants

• English: he

Spanish

Verb

See also

• qualifier with acute accent hé

He () is a third-person, singular personal pronoun (subject case) in Modern English.

Usage

People

He can be used as a substitution of a male's name.

Animals

Grammatically, it is most often incorrect to use the pronouns "he" or "she" when referring to animals, with the neuter "it" being more correct. However, they are both often used colloquially to refer to animals of the appropriate gender.

Generic

Other

The pronoun He, with a universally capitalized H is often used to refer to God.

Gender

The gender system in Modern English is generally natural, semantic and logical, however it is most similar to languages whose gender systems primarily distinguish between the animate and inanimate, and between the personal and impersonal. In the table RP stands for relative pronoun and PP for personal pronoun.

Etymology

Indo-European

The reconstructed Indo-European language provides a demonstrative pronoun ko.

Germanic

English is a development of the West Germanic language family.

Old English

Speakers of Old English (OE) considered each noun to have a grammatical gender — masculine, feminine or neuter. Pronouns were generally (but not always) selected to have the same grammatical gender as the noun they referred to. For example, dæg (, day) was masculine, so a masculine pronoun was used when referring to a day or days. The personal pronoun for a singular masculine subject was written he, just like Present-Day English (PrDE). However, OE he was probably pronounced like PrDE hay (). The vowel in hay is normally longer in duration than in the exlamation Hey! (). Because the vowel sound of OE he was long in duration, scholars (and OE dictionaries) now write it as hē.

Middle English

There was one change to the inflection of the masculine pronoun in Middle English. The OE dative form him replaced the OE accusative hine (). This meant that, in Middle English, there was no distinction between masculine and impersonal, except in the subject case of the third-person singular, until it from hit replaced him in the object case of the impersonal. So, "there was rather an extended period of time in the history of the English language when the choice of a supposedly masculine personal pronoun (him) said nothing about the gender or sex of the referent."

See also

• Generic antecedents
• Gender-specific pronoun
• English personal pronouns

References

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).

I, I myself, alter, alter ego, alterum, better self, bloke, boy, buck, chap, ego, ethical self, fellow, gee, gent, gentleman, guy, her, herself, him, himself, his, hombre, homme, inner man, inner self, it, male, male being, male person, man, masculine, me, my humble self, myself, number one, oneself, other self, ourselves, self, she, subconscious self, subliminal self, superego, them, themselves, they, you, yours truly, yourself, yourselves