they

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Somehow or other they are always liked, even by those who pity and despise them The women only laugh at their irregularities -- they are such "good-hearted creatures!"

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (6)

  1. pronoun Used to refer to the ones previously mentioned or implied.
  2. pronoun Usage Problem Used to refer to the one previously mentioned or implied, especially as a substitute for generic he: Every person has rights under the law, but they don't always know them. See Usage Note at he1.
  3. pronoun Used to refer to people in general.

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Examples (50)

  • When they heard him speaking to them in Hebrew they were all the more quiet; so he went on to say, "I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated under Gamaliel in all the strictness of our law. —  The Children's Bible
  • Miladinoff had been born at Struga in Macedonia and educated at Jannina, where he noticed that a number of the names of forests, rivers, villages and ruins sounded odd in Greek--they seemed to have much more resemblance to the language spoken by the Slavs who lived beyond his home, the Bulgars. —  The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1
  • You never heard the terms "Tsar" and "Tsaritza" employed in Russia, not, at all events, in French; they were always spoken of as "L'Empereur" and "L'Impératrice," and in the churches it was always "Imperator." —  Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918
  • And the two little knights of Kentucky, and Miss Allison and the Waltons--they were all mythical people in one sense, like Alice in Wonderland and Bo-peep, yet in another they were as real as Holland or Hazel Lee, for they were household names, and she had heard so much about them that she felt a sort of kinship with each one With the mask and the box tucked away in readiness under her pillow, it was an easy matter after Joyce had gone to sleep for Mary to lift herself to a sitting posture, inch by inch. —  The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor
  • Dead for her they were at that moment; she could see nothing but her husband's baseness and a baseness bred by it in herself; her bond to him was an obligation to dishonour and a chain of treachery. —  Quisanté
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English, from Old Norse their, masculine pl. demonstrative and personal pron.; see to- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. from Middle English they, thei, thai, partly of Scandinavian origin (see below), partly from Anglo-Saxon thā = Old Saxon thia, thie = OFries. thā = Dutch de = Low German dc = Old High German dia, die, de. Middle High German G. die = Icelandic their = Gothic (Moesogothic) thai; plural of Anglo-Saxon the, etc., that, the: see that, the. The Middle English they was declined in midland and southern Middle English thus: nominative they, etc., genitive hire, here, hir, her, dative hem; in northern Middle English nominative they, thei, thai, genitive thair, thaire, ther, dative accusative thaim, tham, them; in Orm. nominative theʒʒ, genitive theʒʒre, dative accusative theʒʒm; orig. forms of the def. art., Anglo-Saxon nominative accusative plural thā, genitive thāra, thǣra, dative thǣm, thām. The Anglo-Saxon thā, thāra, thām retained the demonstrative force till late in Middle English; the northern dialects, however, began through Danish influence to use them, or rather the Danish forms and the Anglo-Saxon forms together, as the plural. Cf. he, she, it. Cf. Icelandic nominative their, genitive theira, genitive dative theim, they, their, them, as the plural of hann, hōn, he, she.
 

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/ðei/
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