Them

How to spell them

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce them

What does them mean?

1. pronounThe objective form of 'they', referring to people or things previously mentioned.

Them in a sentence

• The manager thanked them for finishing the report early.

• The parcels arrived damaged, so we returned them to the warehouse.

Where does them come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The word 'them' comes from Old Norse, specifically the dative plural pronoun 'þeim', meaning 'to those' or 'to them'. This Norse form was carried into northern English during the Viking settlements of the ninth and tenth centuries and gradually displaced the older native Old English pronoun 'him' (the dative plural, confusingly close to the singular). The whole 'they', 'their', 'them' cluster is one of the rare cases where English borrowed core grammatical words rather than vocabulary, a sign of how deeply Norse and English speakers mixed in the Danelaw. By the time of Middle English, 'them' had spread south and settled as the standard objective plural pronoun. Its spelling has stayed remarkably stable, and because it is so common and short, it rarely troubles adult writers.

How the word is built

• them (objective form of 'they', from Old Norse 'þeim')