ze

Ze is a pronoun that serves the same grammatical function as he or she, except that it’s gender-neutral. Ze is typically used by people who identify as nonbinary or genderqueer, meaning that their gender identify falls outside of the strict binary of only male or only female.

For those who identify in one of these ways and who are deciding which pronouns to use, there are a lot of options.

The most commonly used is nonbinary they. Some pronouns similar to ze include zie, zhe, xe, xie, sie, ve, and ce.

However, it should be noted that these shouldn’t be considered synonyms of ze in the sense that they are interchangeable when referring to the same person—the pronouns the person has specified are the ones that should be used.

Ze is often used as part of the ze/zir/zir set of pronouns, but it is sometimes also used as part of other, similar sets, such as ze/hir/hir and ze/zan/zan.

In the next section, we’ll break down some of the nonbinary pronoun sets that people use.

First and foremost: if someone says they use ze as one of their pronouns, that’s what you should use when referring to them. Some people might use a mix of pronouns, such as ze and they, in which case you can use either one, or both at different times.

There are a lot of different nonbinary pronouns, and it can seem overwhelming. To help, here is a chart of some (not all) nonbinary pronouns, along with the grammatical function of each one to help you understand how they’re used (and conjugated).

You can plug each set into this sentence to see how each pronoun is used:

[Column 1 subject form] told me to text [column 2 object form], but I don’t have [column 3 possessive form] number. 

In many (but not all) cases, the possessive pronoun form (the one equivalent to theirs, as in That book is theirs) is simply formed by adding s to the possessive adjective form (the one that’s equivalent to their): That book is zirs. Similarly, the reflexive form (the one equivalent to themself) is often formed by simply adding self to the object form (the one that’s equivalent to them): zirself.

Ze is a personal pronoun. It’s singular.

But before we get too grammatical, it should be noted that ze is what’s called a neopronoun. A neopronoun is a gender-neutral pronoun that has been recently coined to fill the lack of gender-neutral options in English (not all gender-neutral pronouns are neopronouns—singular they has been used for centuries).

Grammatically speaking, ze is categorized as a third person pronoun (like he, she, him, her, and them), meaning that it’s used to refer to anyone other than the person doing the addressing (first person) or the ones being addressed (second person).

Ze is a nominative pronoun, meaning that it’s generally used as the subject of a sentence—the one doing the action—as opposed to the object (the one on the receiving end of some action). A common objective form of ze is zir, as in Ze asked me to drive zir home. However, other object forms are sometimes used.

For more, check out our guide to gender-neutral pronouns.

And our guide to gender-neutral language.

The neopronoun ze is typically pronounced zee (like the letter Z). The similar pronouns zie, xe, and xie are usually pronounced in the same way.