who
Plural: whos
Noun
- a United Nations agency to coordinate international health activities and to help governments improve health services
- A person under discussion; a question of which person.
Pron
- What person or people; which person or people; asks for the identity of someone; used in a direct or indirect question.
- Introduces a relative clause having a human antecedent.
- With antecedent as subject.
- Introduces a relative clause having a human antecedent.
- With antecedent as object: whom.
- Whoever, he who, they who.
- Also used with names of collective nouns that are groups of people, especially singularly-named musical groups or sports teams.
Det
- whose
Pronoun
- What or which person or persons.
Examples
- Give it to who deserves it.
- My brother, who you met the other day, is coming to stay for the weekend.
- That's the man who I saw earlier.
- Who are the Miami Heat?
- Who insults my mother insults me.
- Who knew such a small word like WHO could create hooks for longer, more complex plays?
- Who phone just rang?
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English who, hwo, huo, wha, hwoa, hwa, from Old English hwā (dative hwām, genitive hwæs), from Proto-West Germanic *hwaʀ, from Proto-Germanic *hwaz, from Proto-Indo-European *kʷos, *kʷís.
The sound change /hw/ > /h/ (without a corresponding change in spelling) was due to wh-cluster reduction after an irregular change of /ɑː/ to /oː/ in Middle English (instead of the expected /ɔː/) and further to /uː/ regularly in Early Modern English. A similar change occurred in two. Compare how, which underwent wh-reduction earlier (in Old English), and thus is spelt with h.
Compare Scots wha, West Frisian wa, Dutch wie, Low German we, German wer, Swedish vem, Danish hvem, Norwegian Bokmål hvem, Norwegian Nynorsk kven, Icelandic hver.
Synonyms
World Health Organization
Scrabble Score: 9
who: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordwho: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
who: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary