Definitions
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- A word coined, in 1858, by C. C. Converse, as a pronoun of the third person and of common gender designed to be substituted for the locutions ‘him or her,’ ‘his or hers,’ etc. It has been but little used.
Wiktionary
- pro. rare they (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular subject pronoun, coordinate with gendered pronouns he and she.
- pro. rare them (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular object pronoun, coordinate with gendered pronouns him and her.
Etymologies
- Proposed in 1858 by Charles Crozat Converse from that + one. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“The Cause: One of the things I find particularly cool about the read-a-thon is that people read for a cause, usually one related to literacy.”
“A'd been hopin thon wis the last fae him, bit seeminlie A'm oot o luck.”
“From all appearances, it seems that Fast-a-thon is an attempt at crypto-dawah — getting people involved in Islamic practices unwittingly, and perhaps only after the fact letting them know that they have participated in a Muslim religious ritual.”
The non-kinetic 5GW jihad against the US continues « PurpleSlog – Awesomeness & Modesty Meets Sexy
“In Plato's Timaeus, for example, the story of Phaëthon is described as a myth that helps to explain the cyclical motions of the celestial bodies. 16 Nonetheless, as history tends to alight on the unusual and overlook the commonplace, evaluations of the studioli have centered on the historical significance of the perspectival compositions and their mathematical underpinnings.”
Architecture and Memory: The Renaissance Studioli of Federico da Montefeltro
“Why haven't I signed up for the 24 hour Read-a-thon, which is going to start soon?”
“The word thon was proposed for that use decades ago, and they actually put it in Webster's Second (at least in my edition, from 1954): a proposed genderless pronoun of the third person.”
“When I was a kid, I raised money every year for Multiple Sclerosis via a read-a-thon, which is a little more to my pace.”
“What about taking part in a competitive sport which is actually fun and doesn't leave your legs feeling like they've been hit with a pool ball in a sock for five hours? annual Fap-a-thon, which is a bit like those telethons that they used to do on TV in the 80s to raise money for charity but with jerking off instead of dumb-ass celebrity dance routines and teddy bear mascots.”
“Percy - The smoke a thon is the 2 seed and I suppose I'll set a lineup for these guys to give token resistance to whoever get's to play them.”
“Best Man-a-thon, which is essentially the same idea, stretched out to feature length.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘thon’.
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Weeeeerd
Strange words.
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some words
phatic, macerate, amanuenses, theophagy, seraglio, gloaming, geophagy, metaphone, anastrophe, neologism, tetragrammaton, bête noire and 568 more...
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Perceived linguistic gaps in English,...
From POSSLQ to "the naughties", a place to list those concepts for which English still appears to have no satisfactorily precise term. Your suggestions are invited!
naughties, birhymagram, posslq, the aughts, the noughties, the oh-ohs, the double-ohs, the twenty hundreds, the two thousands, the preteens, the deccies, the nillies and 17 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for thon.
john Gender-neutral pronoun. Oct 11, 2007