overwordExplorer
GERMAN · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

er.

he

2 characters1 syllables approx.Deutsch language

Meaning & usage

pron/eːr/standard[ʔeːɐ̯]standard[ʔɛɐ̯]standard/ɐ/colloquial
  1. he

    personal
    Wo ist Klaus? Wo ist er?
    Dies ist mein Hund. Er heißt Waldi.
  2. it (when the grammatical gender of the object/article/thing/animal etc., being referred to, is masculine (der))

    personal
    Dort steht ein Baum. Er ist über hundert Jahre alt.
  3. she (when the grammatical gender of the noun being referred to and designating a female person, is masculine (der))

    personal
    Im Frauengefängnis versuchte ein Häftling zu flüchten, aber er kam nicht weit.
  4. Used in reference to a computer or other machine when personifying it; it

    colloquial
    Ich habe die Route gerade ins Navi eingegeben, und jetzt sagt er, die Autobahn wäre gesperrt.
  5. alternative spelling of Er (you (polite))

    alt-of · alternative · archaic · personal
Where this word comes from

From Middle High German ër, from Old High German ër, from Proto-West Germanic *iʀ, from Proto-Germanic *iz. In northern Middle High German and Old High German there also existed forms with initial h-, namely Middle High German hër, Old High German hër, from Proto-Germanic *hiz, whence Central Franconian hä and (from the accusative) Luxembourgish hien. Compare English he. The unusual spelling ih- in the forms ihm, ihn is not related to this. It was introduced in early modern German to distinguish these forms from im, in (when *iem, *ien could have been read as *jem, *jen).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.