xe
/zi/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.73 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
2
Letters
1
Syllables
2
Unique Chars
Meaning
pron
they (singular); gender-neutral third-person singular subject pronoun, coordinate with gendered pronouns he and she.
name
Abbreviation of Extreme E.
Example Sentences
- "Anyone I would be interested in would have to be a pretty special person. I wouldn't want to miss out on knowing such a person just because xe happened to be the "wrong" sex."
- "Telepathy would require that you share the other person's knowledge of xyr own mind, which in turn requires recognizing that xe is actually aware of what xe's thinking, which is incompatible with psychiatry."
- "Now full ownership in the modern sense... implies four rights of the owner: 1. The right to decide what xe does with xyr property; 2. the right to decide what others do with xyr property; […]"
- "Since xe went to the trouble of re-posting, I figured it was about something of more than usual importance to hir... I wrote to EmGee privately and xe said yes, that was one of the things xe was talking about."
- "I mean, suppose there's someone who can't leave the house because xe's all tied up with counting tiles in the bathroom all day, and if xe manages to get done with that, there's the stove to check again and again ... you get the idea."
- "The soft blue sky had the feel of a good omen. In Xir old age, the god moved slower every year; lingering in the shallows long after the last fish had been swallowed up by nets. Sometimes Xe stood still for days, in sight of the shore, as if Xe had not quite decided whether to beach Xemself for good. Let Xem only survive long enough to spawn a new god! Else Xir helpless people would be godless ans stranded in the haunted dryland where the dead cities slept. Where less kindly deities roamed."
Etymology
Apparently independently invented by several people, including Don Rickter. The pronoun appeared in the Unitarian Universalist publication UU World on May 1, 1973, and Mario Pei gave Rickter credit on page 145 of his book Weasel Words (1978).
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /zi/
- British English: /ziː/
Inflected Forms
Derived Forms
Frequently Paired Words
eGT
FE