she
Meanings
- The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied.
- A ship or boat.
- A country, or sometimes a city, province, planet, etc.
- A thing, especially a machine or other object, such as a car, a computer, or (poetically) a season.
- A person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (used in a work, along with or in place of he, as an indefinite pronoun).
- A female.
- To refer to (someone) using she/her pronouns.
- Synonym of her.
- Initialism of standard hydrogen electrode.
- Initialism of superheavy element.
- Initialism of safety, health, environment.
- Initialism of selective harmonic elimination.
- Honorific alternative letter-case form of she, sometimes used when referring to God or another important figure who is understood from context.
- An ethnic group in southern China.
- A language of the Hmong-Mien language family spoken by the She people.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English sche, scho, hyo, ȝho (“she”), whence also Yorkshire dialectal shoo (“she”), Scots she, sho (“she”). Probably from Old English hēo (whence dialectal English hoo), with an irregular change in stress from hēo to heō /hjoː/, then a development from /hj-/ to /ç/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of Shetland from Old Norse Hjaltland. In this case, she is from Proto-West Germanic *hiju, from Proto-Germanic *hijō f (“this, this one”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe-, *ḱey- (“this, here”), and is cognate with Saterland Frisian jo, ju, West Frisian hja, North Frisian jü, Danish hun, Swedish hon; more at he. A derivation from Old English sēo (“that one”, occasionally “she”) is also possible, though less likely. In that case, sēo would have undergone a change in stress from sēo to seō /sjoː/, then a change from /sj-/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of sure from Old French seur. It would then be cognate to Dutch zij and German sie. Neither etymology would be expected to yield the modern vocalism in /iː/ (the expected form would be shoo, which is in fact found dialectally). It may be due to influence from he, but both hēo and sēo also have rare variants (hīe and sīe) that may give modern English /iː/.