1025: They Sep 29, 2017

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The pronoun 'they' has a few different uses. In addition to the standard usage as a third-person plural pronoun, there is also the somewhat 'singular they' which stands in for the arguably more cumbersome "he or she" and any other declensions thereof in constructions like "if someone is hungry, he or she should eat" or "...they should eat". This is especially disliked by prescriptivists, but it is perfectly understandable, and has been present in English for a long time. Also, some people elect to be called 'they' individually, so this usage is also more inclusive. The pronoun, however, has taken on an even more hypothetical role than just being a substitute for "he or she", and people use it in hypothetical statements, or ones relating to the future, such as in this quote taken from the Twitter account of Solomon Georgio, "you think getting friend zoned is bad, imagine your creepy male friend thinking you owe them something" in which "them" stands in for a singular, but that singular has been specified as 'male'. If you have other examples of this or any other usage, feel free to include them in a comment.

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