she

Meanings

1. 1
   pron

   nominative singular feminine pronoun

   She looked in the mirror.

2. 2
   pron

   The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied.

   I asked Mary, but she said that she didn't know.

3. 3
   pron

   A ship or boat.

   She could do forty knots in good weather.

4. 4
   pron

   A country, or sometimes a city, province, planet, etc.

   She is a poor place, but has beautiful scenery and friendly people.

5. 5
   pron

   A thing, especially a machine or other object, such as a car, a computer, or (poetically) a season.

   She only gets thirty miles to the gallon on the highway, but she’s durable.

6. 6
   pron

   A person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (used in a work, along with or in place of he, as an indefinite pronoun).

   Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage.

7. 7
   noun

   A female.

   Pat is definitely a she.

8. 8
   verb

   To refer to (someone) using she/her pronouns.

   If somebody wants to go by “he,” continually “sheing” them [is invalidating].

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, Dan…