In 1918, S. D. Smith, of Davenport, Iowa, proposed two new pronouns, pham and phem, to refer to “either a man or a woman” (Illinois State Register, March 22, 1918, p. 4). Pham is singular, phem is plural. Smith offered two reflexives as well, phamself and phemself.
Since the late 18th century, writers had noted that English had no “common gender” third person singular pronoun. There was no pronoun to use when someone’s gender was unknown or irrelevant, or it needed to be concealed.
Most writers insisted that new pronouns weren’t necessary because a generic masculine he could always include women. But he included women only when men found it convenient, and so most of the time he meant ‘only men.’
Using an inclusive phrase like he or she was typically condemned as awkward and repetitive (gender at the time was considered binary), and singular they was rejected as ungrammatical (more on that in a bit).
By the time Smith proposed pham and phem, wordsmiths intent on supplying the missing word had coined more than one hundred gender-free pronouns, from E (1841) and ne (1849) to ze (1864) and zie (1890). Like pham and phem, most of these pronouns disappeared as soon as they were launched, though a few managed to generate some discussion before vanishing. Two early pronouns that actually made it into dictionaries, thon (1858) and he’er (1911), never achieved wide use.
Smith offered this example of how to use pham in a sentence:
If a person away from home gets homesick the infallible cure for pham is to go home.
It’s not clear why Smith coined the plural phem, since English already had a full set of gender-neutral plurals: they, them, and their. Smith’s example of how to use phem even includes an unnecessary their:
Persons wanting to buy real estate will do well to call on or send their phem’s names and addresses to Jones and Co., agents.
In any case, Smith also coined some gender-neutral alternatives to generic man and men: congresspham, statesphem, and phamhood. Although these words would never be adopted, they do anticipate some of today’s sex-neutral terms, like server, chair, and flight attendant.
Like most gender-neutral pronouns, pham and phem didn’t catch on. And yet speakers of English still feel that there’s a word missing from the language, and so, in addition to such non-starters as ve (1864), en (1868), and le (1871), pronouns like E, sie, ze, zie, pham and phem have been re-coined, sometimes more than once, in the past 150 years. By the 1970s, well before the current interest in nonbinary gender, more than 200 neutral pronouns had appeared. An online search shows that word coiners are still turning out nonbinary pronouns at an impressive clip. They're sometimes called neopronouns, but their long history shows they're hardly new.
Fearing the power of these pronouns to destroy civilization as we know it, legislators in conservative-led states like Smith’s home state of Iowa, along with Florida, Indiana, and Texas, are doing their best to outlaw pronouns. Tennessee, the state that banned evolution in the 1920s, banned linguistic evolution a century later with a law forbidding the use of tax dollars for gender-neutral pronouns, though no one has ever been able to pinpoint exactly how much a pronoun costs.
But no matter what color state you live in, or whether you think of gender as a fixed binary or a more-fluid set of options, there’s another way to avoid generic he: singular they, as in this example,
Everyone forgets their password.
Singular they has been common in English speech and writing since the 14th century, and today most dictionaries, grammars, and usage guides accept it. But in S. D. Smith’s day, few grammarians defended the usage.
But if you can be singular, why can’t they be singular too?
Recently some people have argued that the second person pronoun you needs a distinct plural form, an alternative to y’all, a form that’s regional, or you guys, because guys is typically perceived as masculine. But as I pointed out in a post a couple of years ago, you has been plural since the earliest days of English. It’s singular you that’s the newcomer.
Plural you began doubling as a singular in the 17th century, as the use of the older second person singular thou was declining. And when singular you came on the scene, purists objected that using a plural pronoun as a singular was both ambiguous and ungrammatical (this despite the fact that it was both common and unremarkable for monarchs and writers to use the first-person plural “we” for singular “I”). And no one is calling for thou, thee, and thy to be revived.
English has managed to thrive without collapsing under the weight of an ambiguous singular you. So feel free to tell anyone who objects to the 700-year-old singular they that speakers of English have been using an “ungrammatical” singular you for well over 300 years. And you can forget about pham, a word that was forgotten almost as soon as it was coined.
Here’s a little jingle to help you deliver the message about singular they:
