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Whose
Whose (/hu:z/) is an English wh- pronoun (a type of wh- word).
Meaning[edit | edit source]
Whose relates to possession, particularly by people, though it is not restricted to this sense.
- Whose is this?
- Whose are those?
- Whose car is it?
- He is a man whose principles are lacking.
Form[edit | edit source]
Whose is the genitive case form of who, what and which; so it indicates possession. The possessive 's suffix gets suffixed.
Grammatically, it can act either as an interrogative pronoun or a relative pronoun. Syntactically, whose can act as either an independent pronoun or as a dependent pronoun (i.e. a type of determiner). As a relative pronoun it is the only dependent relative possessive pronoun in English.
Interrogative pronoun:
- Whose bike is this?
Relative pronoun:
- The man, whose car had broken down, was angry.
- She was the woman whose dog was loose.
Pronunciation[edit | edit source]
Like who, ⟨wh⟩ here is pronounced with a h phoneme /h/.
Spelling[edit | edit source]
This needs to be learnt as a sightword.
A common spelling/grammar error is to spell this as ⟨who’s⟩.[1] This is similar to how people commonly misspell its as ⟨it’s⟩.
