English

Pronoun

whoever ‎(nominative case, possessive whosever, objective whomever)

1. Whatever person or persons.

   Whoever thought up that stupid idea?

Usage notes

• Who is a subject pronoun. Whom is an object pronoun. To determine whether a particular sentence uses a subject or an object pronoun, rephrase it to use she/he or her/him instead of who, whom; if you use she, then you use the subject pronoun who; if you use her, then you use the object pronoun.

• In informal writing and speech who is also used as an object pronoun (hence one hears not only whom are you waiting for? but also who are you waiting for?), and whom may be seen as (overly) formal. As an exception to this, fronted prepositional phrases almost always use whom, e.g. one usually says with whom did you go?, not *with who did you go?.

• The use of who as an object pronoun is proscribed by many authorities.

Translations

See also

• whatever
• wherever
• whenever
• whomever
• whosoever
• nobody

Pronoun

whoever

1. Misspelling of who ever.
   • 2014 July 13, Peter FitzSimons, “Ian Thorpe acknowledges he's gay, let's hope he's now happy as well”, in Sydney Morning Herald:

     When the gays can claim the toughest bastard whoever pulled on a football boot as one of their own, ...

Anagrams

• however