them
Listen:Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
them/ðəm/
▶pronoun [third person pl.]
- 1 used as the object of a verb or preposition to refer to two or more people or things previously mentioned or easily identified.
■ used after the verb ‘to be’ and after ‘than’ or ‘as’.
- 2 referring to a person of unspecified sex (used in place of either ‘him’ or ‘him or her’).
- 3 archaic themselves.
usage: On the use of them in the singular to mean ‘him or her’, see usage at they.
'them' also found in these Oxford entries:
absolve
- advisory
- alienate
- amrit
- and
- angle bracket
- arrest
- ask
- assault and battery
- autocomplete
- autocorrelation
- aversion therapy
- backplane
- bacteriostat
- baggy
- balneology
- baptism
- bear
- beat
- beaver
- bed and breakfast
- berserk
- birth certificate
- Bitrex
- blackout
- blanch
- blind man's buff
- blindsight
- bling
- blow
- body-check
- bookend
- bouncer
- brace
- bracket
- Bronx cheer
- brood
- bull
- busway
- buy-back
- call
- camouflage
- cancer
- canonical hours
- capacitate
- carve
- caution
- cavity wall
- characteristic radiation
- chestnut
