(hē)
pron.a. Used to refer to the man or boy previously mentioned or implied.
b. Used to refer to a male animal.
- Usage Problem Used to refer to a person whose gender is unspecified or unknown: “He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence” (William Blake).
noun A male person or animal: Is the cat a he?
Usage Note: Traditionally the pronouns
he, him, and
his have been used as generic or gender-neutral singular pronouns, as in
A novelist should write about what he knows best and
No one seems to take any pride in his work anymore. Since the early 20th century, however, this usage has come under increasing criticism for reflecting and perpetuating gender stereotyping. • Defenders of the traditional usage have argued that the masculine pronouns
he, his, and
him can be used generically to refer to men and women. This analysis of the generic use of
he is linguistically doubtful. If
he were truly a gender-neutral form, we would expect that it could be used to refer to the members of any group containing both men and women. But in fact the English masculine form is an odd choice when it refers to a female member of such a group. There is something plainly disconcerting about sentences such as
Each of the stars of As Good As It Gets [i.e., Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt] won an Academy Award for his performance. In this case, the use of
his forces the reader to envision a single male who stands as the representative member of the group, a picture that is at odds with the image that comes to mind when we picture the stars of
As Good As It Gets. Thus
he is not really a gender-neutral pronoun; rather, it refers to a male who is to be taken as the representative member of the group referred to by its antecedent. The traditional usage, then, is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought. • It is clear that many people now routinely construct their remarks to avoid generic
he, usually using one of two strategies: changing to the plural, so
they is used (which is often the easiest solution) or using compound and coordinate forms such as
he/she or
he or she (which can be cumbersome in sustained use). In some cases, the generic pronoun can simply be dropped or changed to an article with no change in meaning. The sentence
A writer who draws on personal experience for material should not be surprised if reviewers seize on that fact is complete as it stands and requires no pronoun before the word
material. The sentence
Every student handed in his assignment is just as clear when written
Every student handed in the assignment. • Not surprisingly, the opinion of the Usage Panel in such matters is mixed. While 37 percent actually prefer the generic
his in the sentence
A taxpayer who fails to disclose the source of income can be prosecuted under the new law, 46 percent prefer a coordinate form like
his or her; 7 percent felt that no pronoun was needed in the sentence; 2 percent preferred an article, usually
the; and another 2 percent overturned tradition by advocating the use of generic
her, a strategy that brings the politics of language to the reader's notice. Thus a clear majority of the Panel prefers something other than
his. The writer who chooses to use generic
he and its inflected forms in the face of the strong trend away from that usage may be viewed as deliberately calling attention to traditional gender roles or may simply appear to be insensitive. See Usage Notes at
each,
every,
neither,
one,
she,
they.
