Word.ws English Dictionary

he/she

he/she pronoun: he or she; singular of they, used as a gender-neutral reference to the third person singular.

Pronoun

he/she (third person singular, plural they)

  1. (singular, third-person) He or she; singular of they, used as a gender-neutral reference to the third person singular.
    • Ask a receptionist if he/she is not busy.
    • Only the player having the move may adjust one or more pieces on their squares, provided that he/she first expresses his/her intention (for example by saying “j’adoube” or “I adjust”).2022, “2023 Laws of Chess”, in FIDE, page 8
    Synonyms:
    she/he, s/he, he, they

Synonyms of he/she

Forms of he/she

pluralthey
alternative formhe or she

Questions about he/she

What does he/she mean?
He/she means he or she; singular of they, used as a gender-neutral reference to the third person singular.
What part of speech is he/she?
He/she is a pronoun.

Words near he/she in the dictionary

  1. he-whore
  2. he-whores
  3. he-wolf
  4. he-wolves
  5. he/him
  6. he/she
  7. hea
  8. hea'
  9. Heaberlin
  10. Heaberlins
  11. Heacham

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: he/she (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “he/she.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/he%2Fshe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.