science

Neopronoun

Neopronoun is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Neopronoun rather than just read about it. In short: Neopronouns, or xenopronouns, are neologistic third-person personal pronouns beyond those that already exist in a language. In English, neopronouns replace the existing pronouns "he", "she", and "they".

Key takeaways

Neopronoun belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Neopronoun to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Neopronoun from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Neopronouns, or xenopronouns, are neologistic third-person personal pronouns beyond those that already exist in a language. In English, neopronouns replace the existing pronouns "he", "she", and "they". Neopronouns are preferred by some non-binary individuals who feel that they provide options to reflect their gender identity more accurately than conventional pronouns. Neopronouns may be words created to serve as pronouns, such as "ze/hir", or derived from existing words and turned into personal pronouns, such as "fae/faer". Some neopronouns allude to they/them, such as "ey/em", also known as Elverson pronouns. An online survey by The Trevor Project in 2020 found that 4% of the surveyed LGBTQ youth aged 13–24 used neopronouns.

History Singular they had emerged by the 14th century as a third-person pronoun, about a century after the plural they, and is first attested in the 14th-century poem William and the Werewolf. Neopronouns were not coined until the 18th century. One of the first instances of a neopronoun being used was in 1789, when William H. Marshall recorded the use of "ou" as a pronoun. "Thon" was originally a Scots version of "yon" and means "that" or "that one". In 1858, it was introduced as a gender-neutral pronoun by the American composer Charles Crosby Converse. It was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary in 1934 and removed from it in 1961. "Ze" as a gender-neutral English pronoun dates back to at least 1864. In 1911, an insurance broker named Fred Pond invented the pronoun set "he'er, his'er and him'er", which the superintendent of the Chicago public-school system proposed for adoption by the school system in 1912, sparking a national debate in the US, with "heer" being added to the Funk & Wagnalls dictionary in 1913. The Sacramento Bee used the gender-neutral "hir" for 25 years from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1970, Mary Orovan invented the pronoun "co/coself", which gained use in a cooperative community in Virginia called the Twin Oaks Community, where it was still in use as of 2011. In 1996, Kate Bornstein used the pronouns "ze/hir" to refer to a character in their novel Nearly Roadkill. In a 2006 interview, transgender activist Leslie Feinberg included "ze/hir" as a preferred pronoun (along with "she/her" and "he/him", depending on context), stating, "I like the gender neutral pronoun 'ze/hir' because it makes it impossible to hold on to gender/sex/sexuality assumptions about a person you're about to meet or you've just met." The Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for "ze" in 2018 and entries for "hir" and "zir" in 2019. The term "neopronoun" emerged in the 2010s.

Noun-self pronouns Noun-self pronouns are a type of neopronoun that involves a word being used as a personal pronoun. Examples of noun-self pronouns include "vamp/vampself", "kitten/kittenself", and "doll/dollself". Noun-self pronouns trace their origins to the early 2010s on the website Tumblr.

Reception There has been some conflict over neopronouns, with opposition to the idea in both the transgender community and among cisgender people. Many people find them unfamiliar and confusing to use. Some have said that use of neopronouns, especially noun-self pronouns, comes from a position of privilege, makes the LGBTQ community look like a joke, or that the attention placed on neopronouns pulls focus away from larger, more important issues, such as transphobic bullying, the murder of trans people, and suicide. Noun-self pronouns have been viewed by Wall Street Journal opinion writer Colin Wright as unhelpful and unnecessary. People who are supportive of neopronouns state that they are helpful for genderqueer individuals to find "something that was made for them", and for neurodivergent people who may struggle with their gender identity. Some magazines and newspapers have published articles on neopronouns that are generally in support of them, detailing how to use them and be supportive of those who do.

See also Gender neutrality in languages with gendered third-person pronouns LGBTQ linguistics – Study of language used by LGBTQ people List of gender identities Rolling pronouns – Practice of using multiple personal pronouns

References

External links The dictionary definition of neopronoun at Wiktionary

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Neopronoun

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Neopronoun claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Neopronoun before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Neopronoun ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Neopronoun

In research: Neopronoun appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Neopronoun in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Neopronoun is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Gender-neutral pronouns, Grammatical gender, Linguistic controversies, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Neopronoun outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Neopronoun in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Neopronoun means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Neopronoun out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Neopronoun in simple terms?

Why does Neopronoun matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Neopronoun?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Neopronoun.