“Sheth” is a form of
she
UK /ʃiː/ · US /ʃi/ pronoun, noun, verb, determiner, proper noun
Also a form of herself
Forms her hers herself shes shoo hoo shee
- pronoun (personal) The female (typically) person or animal previously mentioned or implied. “I asked Mary, but she said that she didn't know.”
- pronoun (personal, sometimes endearing) A ship or boat. “She could do forty knots in good weather.”
- pronoun (personal, dated, sometimes endearing) A country, or sometimes a city, province, planet, etc. “She is a poor place, but has beautiful scenery and friendly people.”
- pronoun (personal, endearing or poetic, chiefly dated) A thing, especially a machine or other object, such as a car, a computer, or (poetically) a season. “She only gets thirty miles to the gallon on the highway, but she’s durable.”
- pronoun (personal, nonstandard) A person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant (used in a work, along with or in place of he, as an indefinite pronoun).
- pronoun (personal, Roman Catholicism) The Catholic Church.
- noun A female. “Pat is definitely a she.”
- verb (transitive) To refer to (someone) using she/her pronouns.
- determiner (African-American Vernacular) Synonym of her.
- proper noun A county of Handan, Hebei, China.
- noun An ethnic group in southern China.
- noun A language of the Hmong-Mien language family spoken by very few She people.
Synonyms
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English sche, scho, hyo, ȝho (“she”), whence also Yorkshire dialectal shoo (“she”), Scots she, sho (“she”).
Probably from Old English hēo (whence dialectal English hoo), with an irregular change in stress from hēo to heō /hjoː/, then a development from /hj-/ to /ç/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of Shetland from Old Norse Hjaltland. In this case, she is from Proto-West Germanic *hiju, from Proto-Germanic *hijō f (“this, this one”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱe-, *ḱey- (“this, here”), and is cognate with Saterland Frisian jo, ju, West Frisian hja, North Frisian jü, Danish hun, Swedish hon; more at he.
A derivation from Old English sēo (“that one”, occasionally “she”) is also possible, though less likely. In that case, sēo would have undergone a change in stress from sēo to seō /sjoː/, then a change from /sj-/ to /ʃ-/, similar to the derivation of sure from Old French seur. It would then be cognate to Dutch zij and German sie.
Neither etymology would be expected to yield the modern vocalism in /iː/ (the expected form would be shoo, which is in fact found dialectally). It may be due to influence from he, but both hēo and sēo also have rare variants (hīe and sīe) that may give modern English /iː/.
From Mandarin 涉 (Shè).
From Mandarin 畲 (Shē).
See she.
Webster’s 1913
- pronoun This or that female; the woman understood or referred to; the animal of the female sex, or object personified as feminine, which was spoken of. She loved her children best in every wise. Chaucer.
- pronoun A woman; a female; --used substantively. [R.]
Etymology [OE. she, sche, scheo, scho, AS. seó, fem. of the definite article, originally a demonstrative pronoun; cf. OS. siu, D. zij, G. sie, OHG. siu, si, si, Icel. su, sja, Goth. si she, so, fem. article, Russ. siia, fem., this, Gr. sa, sya. The possessive her or hers, and the objective her, are from a different root. See Her.]
Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “she”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details