she
see also: SHE, She
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ʃiː/
  • (America) IPA: /ʃi/
Pronoun
  1. (personal) The female person or animal previously mentioned or implied.
    I asked Mary, but she said that she didn't know.
    After the cat killed a mouse, she left it on our doorstep.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene. […], London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for VVilliam Ponsonbie, OCLC 960102938 ↗, book II, canto IX:
      Goodly she entertaind those noble knights, / And brought them vp into her castle hall {{...}
  2. (personal, sometimes affectionate, sometimes considered dated, old-fashioned or offensive) A ship or boat.
    She could do forty knots in good weather.
    She is a beautiful boat, isn’t she?
  3. (personal, dated, sometimes affectionate, old-fashioned) A country, or sometimes a city, province, planet, etc.
    She is a poor place, but has beautiful scenery and friendly people.
  4. (personal, affectionate or poetic, old-fashioned) Any machine or thing, such as a car, a computer, or (poetically) a season.
    She only gets thirty miles to the gallon on the highway, but she’s durable.
    • 1928, The Journal of the American Dental Association, page 765:
      Prodigal in everything, summer spreads her blessings with lavish unconcern, and waving her magic wand across the landscape of the world, she bids the sons of men to enter in and possess. Summer is the great consummation.
  5. (personal, nonstandard) A person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (used in a work, along with or in place of he, as an indefinite pronoun).
    • 1990, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow
      Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen. For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far; for a swimmer, it could be trying to beat his own record; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical passage.
Translations Translations Determiner
  1. (AAVE) Synonym of her#English|her
Noun

she (plural shes)

  1. A female.
    Pat is definitely a she.
    • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes, volume (please specify ), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292 ↗:
      |||tr=|brackets=|subst=|lit=|nocat=1|footer=}}|}}
      Come, come, we know very well what all the matter is; but if one won’t, another will; so pretty a gentleman need never want a lady. I am sure, if I was you, I would see the finest she that ever wore a head hanged, before I would go for a soldier for her.
    • 1609, William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 130”, in Shake-speares Sonnets. Neuer before Imprinted, London: By G[eorge] Eld for T[homas] T[horpe] and are to be sold by William Aspley, OCLC 216596634 ↗:
      And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare.
    • 1847 January – 1848 July, William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair. A Novel without a Hero, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1848, OCLC 3174108 ↗:
      he came home to find […] honest Swartz in her favourite amber-coloured satin, with turquoise bracelets, countless rings, flowers, feathers, and all sorts of tags and gimcracks, about as elegantly decorated as a she chimney-sweep on May-day.
    • 2000, Sue V. Rosser, Building inclusive science volume 28, issues 1-2, page 189:
      A world where the hes are so much more common than the shes can hardly be seen as a welcoming place for women.

SHE
Noun

she (plural shes)

  1. Initialism of standard hydrogen electrode
Related terms
She
Pronoun
  1. Honorific alternative letter-case form of she, sometimes used when referring to God or another important figure who is understood from context.
Noun

she (plural She)

  1. An ethnic group in southern China.
  2. A language of the Hmong-Mien language family spoken by the She people.



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