Word.ws English Dictionary

whom

/huːm/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/hʉwm/

whom pronoun: as the object of a verb.

Pronoun (1)

whom (singular and plural objective case of who)

  1. (formal, interrogative, often) As the object of a verb.
    • Whom did you ask?
    • “Oh?” she said. “So you have decided to revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the – the –” I saw she needed helping out. “Audacity,” I said, throwing her the line. “The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.” It should have been “whom”, but I let it go. “You have the –”...1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC
  2. (formal, interrogative, often) As the object of a preposition.
    • To whom are you referring?
    • With whom were you talking?
  3. (formal, often, relative) Used to refer to a previously mentioned person or people.
    • That is the woman whom I spoke to earlier. (defining)
    • Mr Smith, whom we all know well, will be giving the speech. (non-defining)
  4. (formal, often, fused relative, archaic outside set patterns) The person(s) whom; whomever.
    • To whom it may concern, all business of John Smith Ltd. has now been transferred to Floggitt & Runne.
  5. (formal, informal, often, especially non-US) Also used with names of collective nouns that are groups of people, especially singularly-named musical groups or sports teams.
    • Whom was Lemmy bassist for? Motörhead!

Pronoun (2) capitalized: Whom

Whom

  1. (honorific) Honorific alternative letter-case form of whom, sometimes used when referring to God or another important figure who is understood from context.

whom meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Tagalog and Arabic

whom in Hindi

what person; object of a verb (accusative)
किस kis
relative pronoun (object)
जिस jis

whom in Tamil

what person; object of a verb (accusative)
எவன் evaṉ, எவள் evaḷ, எவர் evar
what person or people, object of a preposition (dative)
யார் yār

whom in Tagalog

what person; object of a verb (accusative)
kanino

whom in Arabic

what person; object of a verb (accusative)
مَنْ man
what person or people, object of a preposition (dative)
مَنْ man
relative pronoun (object)
اَلَّذِي allaḏī, الَّتِي allatī, اَللَّذَيْنِ al-laḏayni, اَللَّتَيْنِ al-latayni, اَلَّذِينَ allaḏīna, اَللَّاتِي al-lātī

Examples of whom in a sentence

  • He's a person with whom I work (defining)
  • We have ten employees, half of whom are carpenters. (non-defining)
  • There is a new girl in the class whom I consider to be a wunderkind.
  • She felt miserable unless she had neighbors with whom to quarrel regularly.
  • “The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.” It should have been “whom”, but I let it go.1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVIII, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:
  • They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, and perhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company...

All 40 example sentences with whom

Forms of whom

singular plural objectiveof who
alternative form (obsolete)whome

Origin of whom

From Middle English whom, wham, from Old English hwām, hwǣm, from Proto-Germanic *hwammai, dative case of *hwaz (“who, what”). Cognate with Scots wham (“whom”), German wem (“whom, to whom”), Danish hvem (“who, whom”), Swedish vem (“who, whom”).

Words formed from whom

Phrases with whom

Words that rhyme with whom

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about whom

What does whom mean?
Whom means as the object of a verb.
What is whom in Hindi?
Whom in Hindi is किस (kis), जिस (jis). See Whom meaning in Hindi.
How do you use whom in a sentence?
He's a person with whom I work (defining)
What part of speech is whom?
Whom is a pronoun.
How do you pronounce whom?
Whom is pronounced /huːm/ (UK).

Words near whom in the dictionary

  1. wholsome
  2. wholsomer
  3. wholsomest
  4. wholth
  5. wholy
  6. whom
  7. whom am I kidding
  8. whom're
  9. whom's
  10. whom've
  11. whom-batt

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: whom (page history and authors); Whom (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: “whom.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whom. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.