them | Search Online Etymology Dictionary

699 entries found.

third person plural pronoun, c. 1200, from Old Norse þeim, dative of plural personal and demonstrative pronoun þeir (see they). Replaced Old English cognate him, heom.

dem

representing pronunciation of them in Jamaican speech, from 1868. As a minced form of damn, attested from late 14c.

'em (pron.)

Middle English; since 17c. taken as a colloquial abbreviation of them, but originally at least in part a form of hem, dative and accusative of the third person plural pronoun.

themselves (pron.)

mid-15c. in northern dialect, standard from 1540s, alteration of Middle English tham-self, emphatic plural pronoun, also reciprocal pronoun (14c.); see them + self, with self, originally an inflected adjective, treated as a noun with a meaning "person" and pluralized. Displacing Old English heom selfum (dative). Themself returned late 20c. as some writers took to replacing himself with gender-neutral everyone, anyone, etc.

cabernet (n.)

family of grapes, or wine made from them, 1833, from French. There seems to be no general agreement on the etymology; the word seems not very old in French and is from the Médoc dialect. Supposedly the best of them, cabernet sauvignon is attested in English from 1846.

McIntosh

kind of red-skinned eating apples, 1874, named for John McIntosh (b. 1777), Ontario farmer who found them in 1796 while clearing woodland on his farm and began to cultivate them. The surname is Gaelic Mac an toisich "son of the chieftain."

mine (v.2)

"lay explosives," 1620s, in reference to old tactic of tunneling under enemy fortifications to blow them up; a specialized sense of mine (v.1) via a sense of "dig under foundations to undermine them" (late 14c.), and miner in this sense is attested from late 13c. Related: Mined; mining.

Balkan (adj.)

1835, "of or pertaining to the Balkans" (q.v.) or to the mountain range that runs across them.

boat-house (n.)

"shed for storing boats and protecting them from weather," 1722, from boat (n.) + house (n.).

phony (adj.)

also phoney, "not genuine," 1899, perhaps an alteration of fawney "gilt brass ring used by swindlers."

His most successful swindle was selling "painted" or "phony" diamonds. He had a plan of taking cheap stones, and by "doctoring" them make them have a brilliant and high class appearance. His confederates would then take the diamonds to other pawnbrokers and dispose of them. ["The Jewelers Review," New York, April 5, 1899]

The noun meaning "phony person or thing" is attested from 1902.

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