his
his Lexical Profile
his Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
Belonging to or associated with a male person or animal previously mentioned or easily identified.
"The professor left his briefcase in the lecture hall after class."
Belonging to or associated with a person of unspecified sex (traditionally used in generic contexts, though 'their' or 'his or her' is now generally preferred).
"Every citizen has the right to voice his opinion in a public forum."
• pronoun
Something belonging to or associated with a male person or animal previously mentioned, used without a following noun.
"My bicycle has a flat tire, so my brother offered to lend me his for the afternoon."
Word Nuance & Usage
Unlike other possessive pronouns such as 'hers', 'ours', and 'theirs', 'his' has the exact same spelling whether it is used as a possessive determiner before a noun ('his book') or as an independent possessive pronoun ('the book is his'), and it never takes an apostrophe.
• Rhymes for his
Word Origin & Etymology
From Old English 'his', the genitive singular masculine and neuter form of the personal pronoun 'hē' (he) and 'hit' (it), derived from Proto-Germanic '*his'. In Middle and Early Modern English, 'his' served as the possessive for both 'he' and 'it' until the form 'its' emerged in the late 16th century.