theirs (pron.)

possessive pronoun, "their own, their people, land, etc.," early 14c., from their + possessive -s, on analogy of his, hers, etc., but in form a double possessive. The same pattern happens in the earlier pronoun, native hiera, here "their;" attested by late Old English as heres.

also from early 14c.

Entries linking to theirs

their (pron.)

plural possessive pronoun, "of, belonging to, or pertaining to them," c. 1200, from Old Norse þierra "of them," genitive of plural personal and demonstrative pronoun þeir "they" (see they). It replaced Old English hiera.

As an adjective from late 14c. Its use with singular objects, historically scorned by grammarians, is attested from c. 1300, and OED (1989) quotes this in Fielding, Goldsmith, Sydney Smith, and Thackeray.

Theirs (c. 1300) is a double possessive. Alternative form theirn (1836) is attested in Midlands and southern dialect in U.K. and the Ozarks region of the U.S. There is a Middle English theiren from early 15c.

Trends of theirs

adapted from books.google.com/ngrams/. Ngrams are probably unreliable.

More to Explore

shiver

of a ship's hull" seems to have been 18c. sailor's slang for "arms and legs" (perhaps with a grim awareness that some of theirs...

blond

Fair hair was much esteemed by both the Greeks and Romans, and so they not only dyed and gold-dusted theirs ..., but also...Those Roman ladies who did not choose to wear wigs of this hue, were accustomed to powder theirs freely with gold dust, so...

hers

Possessive pronouns in Modern English consist of the predicative (mine, thine, his, ours, yours, theirs) that come after...

its

was established as a contraction of it is, or by general habit of omitting apostrophes in personal pronouns (hers, yours, theirs...

his

Old English his (genitive of he), from Proto-Germanic *hisa (source also of Gothic is, Old Saxon is, German es). Originally also the neuter possessive pronoun, but in English it was replaced in that sense c. 1600 by its. In Middle English, hisis was tried for the absolute pronoun

capital

early 13c., "of or pertaining to the head," from Old French capital, from Latin capitalis "of the head," hence "capital, chief, first," from caput (genitive capitis) "head" (from PIE root *kaput- "head"). The meaning "main, principal, chief, dominant, first in importance" is from

kudos

"fame, renown, glory," 1799, probably originally in university slang, from Greek kydos "glory, fame," especially in battle, "a poetical word, found chiefly in the Iliad and Odyssey" [Century Dictionary], literally "that which is heard of," perhaps from PIE root *keu- "to see, obs

teetotal

"pledged to total abstinence from intoxicating drink," 1834, a word possibly formed from total (adj.) with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," though not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Ir

delegate

late 15c., "person appointed and sent by another or others with power to transact business as a representative," from the past-participle adjective (early 15c.), from Old French delegat or directly from Latin delegatus, past participle of delegare "to send as a representative," f

touch

late 13c., "make deliberate physical contact with," from Old French tochier "to touch, hit, knock; mention, deal with" (11c., Modern French toucher), from Vulgar Latin *toccare "to knock, strike" as a bell (source also of Spanish tocar, Italian toccare), perhaps of imitative orig

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updated on March 13, 2024

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Dictionary entries near theirs

Thecodont

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their

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theirself

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theistic