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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

whom.

What person or people; which person or people.

4 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

pron/huːm/Received-Pronunciation, Wales/hʉwm/British, Southern, Standard/hum/Canada, General-American/hʉːm/Australia, New-Zealand
  1. What person or people; which person or people. As the object of a verb.

    formal · interrogative · often
    Whom did you ask?
  2. What person or people; which person or people. As the object of a preposition.

    formal · interrogative · often
    To whom are you referring?
    With whom were you talking?
  3. Used to refer to a previously mentioned person or people.

    formal · often · relative
    That is the woman whom I spoke to earlier. (defining)
    Mr Smith, whom we all know well, will be giving the speech. (non-defining)
  4. The person(s) whom; whomever.

    formal · often
    To whom it may concern, all business of John Smith Ltd. has now been transferred to Floggitt & Runne.
  5. Also used with names of collective nouns that are groups of people, especially singularly-named musical groups or sports teams.

    formal · informal · often
    Whom was Lemmy bassist for? Motörhead!
Where this word comes from

From Middle English whom, wham, from Old English hwām, hwǣm, from Proto-Germanic *hwammai, dative case of *hwaz (“who, what”). Cognate with Scots wham (“whom”), German wem (“whom, to whom”), Danish hvem (“who, whom”), Swedish vem (“who, whom”).

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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.