He's

How to spell he's

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce he's

What does he's mean?

1. otherContraction of 'he is', describing a state, identity, or ongoing action of a male person.
2. otherContraction of 'he has', used with a past participle to describe something a male person has done.

He's in a sentence

• He's a doctor at the local hospital.

• He's already finished his half of the report.

• My brother says he's running late for the meeting.

• The manager confirmed that he's signed the contract.

Where does he's come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a contraction of the pronoun 'he' with either the verb 'is' or the verb 'has'. The pronoun 'he' descends from Old English 'he', a native Germanic word that traces back to a Proto-Germanic demonstrative root meaning roughly 'this one here'. Both 'is' and 'has' are likewise ancient Germanic verbs that have been part of English since its earliest written records. The contracted spelling, in which an apostrophe stands in for the missing letters, became common in writing only from around the seventeenth century as printers settled on the apostrophe to mark omitted sounds. The spelling trap is entirely about that apostrophe: 'he's' (he is or he has) is forever confused with 'his', the possessive form that takes no apostrophe at all.

How the word is built

• he (third-person masculine pronoun)
• -'s (contracted form of 'is' or 'has', with the apostrophe marking the dropped letter)