they
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "they", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "they" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "they" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
they is aEnglishpron. It means: A group of entities previously mentioned. Pronounced /ˈðeɪ̯/. It ranks #35 in English word frequency. Often confused with Ty and try.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | they |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pron |
| IPA | /ˈðeɪ̯/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #35 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for they is 4 letters long, classified as apron, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈðeɪ̯/. Corpus data places it at rank #35 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 5 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for they, with forms such as "htey", "tehy", and "theyy". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Ty", "try", "tie", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *tóy Proto-Germanic *þai Proto-Norse *ᚦᚨᛁᛉ (*þaiʀ) Old Norse þeirbor. Middle English þei English they From Middle English þei, borrowed in the 1200s from Old Norse þeir, plural of the demonstrative sá which acted as a plur… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is they, spelled T-H-E-Y, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A group of entities previously mentioned.
- 2A single person, previously mentioned, whose gender is unknown, irrelevant, or (since 20th c.) non-binary.
- 3People; some people; people in general; someone, excluding the speaker.
- 4The authorities, the (power) elites, the powers that be, the establishment, the man, the system: government, police, employers, etc.
- 5The opponents of the side which is keeping score.
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *tóy Proto-Germanic *þai Proto-Norse *ᚦᚨᛁᛉ (*þaiʀ) Old Norse þeirbor. Middle English þei English they From Middle English þei, borrowed in the 1200s from Old Norse þeir, plural of the demonstrative sá which acted as a plural pronoun. Displaced native Middle English he from Old English hīe — which vowel changes had left indistinct from he (“he”) — by the 1400s, being readily incorporated alongside native words beginning with the same sound (the, that, this). Used as a singular pronoun since 1300, e.g. in the 1325 Cursor Mundi. The Norse term (whence also Icelandic þeir (“they”), Faroese teir (“they”), Danish de (“they”), Swedish de (“they”), Norwegian Nynorsk dei (“they”)) is from Proto-Germanic *þai (“those”) (from Proto-Indo-European *to- (“that”)), whence also Old English þā (“those”) (whence obsolete English tho), Scots thae, thai, thay (“they; those”), Swabian dia (“they”). The origin of the determiner they (“the, those”) is unclear. The OED, English Dialect Dictionary and Middle English Dictionary define it and its Middle English predecessor thei as a demonstrative determiner or adjective meaning “those” or “the”. This could be a continuation of the use of the English pronoun they's Old Norse etymon þeir as a demonstrative meaning “those”, but the OED and EDD say it is limited to southern, especially southwestern, England, specifically outside the region of Norse contact.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: htey,tehy,theyy,thhey,thye,tthey
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for they
Misspelling Variants of "they"
Frequency rank: #35 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: