whoso
whoso pronoun: whosoever, whatever person.
Pronoun
whoso (objective whomso, possessive whoseso)
- whosoever, whatever person
- Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Matthew 23:20-21
- And whoso findeth by the sea
Blown dust of bones will hardly say
If this were that Aholibah.1866, Algernon Swinburne, Aholibah, lines 148-150
Examples of whoso in a sentence
- Whoso raises his hand against you must answer to my sword.1898, Andrew Lang, Arabian Nights:
- And whoso kisseth those apples high, Who kisseth once is a king, Who kisseth twice shall never die, Who kisseth thrice--oh, were it I.1896, Richard Le Gallienne, The Quest of the Golden Girl:
- Whoso would be a man would be a nonconformist.1963, Martin Luther King, quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance", quoted in "Strength to Love":
Forms of whoso
| objective | whomso |
|---|---|
| possessive | whoseso |
| alternative form | who so |
Origin of whoso
From Middle English hoe so, hoo so, hoo-so, from Old English hwā swā; equivalent to who + so.
Questions about whoso
- What does whoso mean?
- Whoso means whosoever, whatever person.
- How do you use whoso in a sentence?
- Whoso raises his hand against you must answer to my sword.
- What part of speech is whoso?
- Whoso is a pronoun.
Words near whoso in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: whoso (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-whoso.ogg.
Cite this entry: “whoso.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/whoso. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.