hir en · DET
Pronunciation
- /hɪə(ɹ)/ (UK)
- hēr (US)
- /hɪɹ/ (US)
Etymology
Blend of him/his + her.
Meanings
-
(nonstandard) Belonging to hir, their (singular). Gender-neutral third-person singular possessive adjective, coordinate with his and her.
Getting down to cases now, a child's learning, L, in the sixth grade will be a function of a number, say k, of variables X1 X2, X3, ... Xk representing hir (hir is an abbreviation for his or her and is pronounced here) previous education, motivation, rapport with teachers, peers' atitudes toward education, teachers' ability, and so on.
1971 March 1, Alexander M. Mood, “Partitioning Variance in Multiple Regression Analyses as a Tool For Developing Learning Models”, in American Educational Research Journal, volume 8, number 2, American Educational Research Association, →DOI, page 192:But once the disorientation had passed, hir forced hirself back to full consciousness--and worked quickly to establish hir position, and Ruskin's.
1988, Jeffrey Carver, From a Changeling Star, New York: Bantam Books, →ISBN, →OL, page 232:The player playing hir character in a MUD (usually) tries to portray a credible, convincing person within the theme of that world, using the tools that MUD provides, hir imagination, and hir social and communicative skills.
2002, Frank Schaap, The Words That Took Us There: Ethnography in a Virtual Reality, Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers, →ISBN, →OL, page 32:A lifelong political activist, Leslie Feinberg (who used the pronoun hir) devoted most of hir writing to exploring the complexities of gender.
2023 June 22, Kurt Soller, Liz Brown, Rose Courteau, Kate Guadagnino, Sara Holdren, “The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:Sie may feel that hir actual identity of hir gender is supposed to be both/neither male or female, outside of gender, third gender, beyond gender, absence of gender, mixing gender, changing gender, or all genders.
2011 May 19, Ken Wickham, The Other Genders: Androgyne, Genderqueer, Non-Binary Gender Variant, CreateSpace, →ISBN, page 7:It is here that Scratch has found hirself, bored out of hir mind but unable to sleep.
1996 June, Caitlin Sullivan with Bornstein, Kate, Nearly Roadkill: an Infobahn erotic adventure, New York: Serpent's Tail, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OL, LCC PS3569.U3449 N43 1996, page 13:"It's a scientific matter," Ludo announces, explaining hir very out transgender behavior (an ongoing source of embarrassment to hir would-be upwardly mobile parents) as the result of hir other X chromosome's having accidentally fallen into the trash on its way down from heaven.
2011 March 29, Jody Norton, “Transchildren and the Discipline of Children's Literature”, in Kenneth B. Kidd, Michelle Ann Abate, editors, Over the Rainbow: Queer Children's and Young Adult Literature, University of Michigan, →ISBN, LCC PS374.H63 O84 2011, page 305:
Deriveds
Hyponyms
Relateds
other attested gender-neutral pronouns