‘They’: the singular pronoun that could solve sexism in English

You only need four letters to take a stand against the prejudice embedded in the English language

I got in trouble over a four-letter word the other day. None of the ones you are thinking of: it was “they” that caused a fracas that Jeremy Clarkson would have been proud of.

At the start of 2016, the good folks of the American Dialect Society got together to crown their Word of the Year. They (see what I’m doing here) have decided that the word could now be used as a singular pronoun, flexing the English language so a plural could denote a singular, genderless, individual.

Related: Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language | David Shariatmadari

If the English language had been properly organised … there would be a word which meant both ‘he’ and ‘she’

Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, Persian – are entirely genderless

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