The Word That Almost Changed How We Speak

In 1858, a Massachusetts attorney and composer named Charles Crozat Converse coined a single word he believed could resolve one of English's oldest grammatical frustrations — the absence of a gender-neutral singular pronoun. That word was thon.

Built by blending that and one, thon carried its own full paradigm: thon (subject), thons (possessive), thonself (reflexive). By 1903 it had earned a definition in Funk & Wagnalls. By 1934 it had entered Merriam-Webster's unabridged dictionary. Then, in 1961, the editors quietly dropped it — reason given: no observed usage.

What would English look like today if thon had caught on? Grammar textbooks from 1910 onward would teach four pronouns: he, she, they, thon. Legal documents would default to thon for generic reference. The long argument over singular they — still ongoing when Merriam-Webster declared it Word of the Year in 2019 — would have been settled 160 years earlier.

Instead, the 500-year-old workaround won. Singular they — already present in Shakespeare, already in Austen — quietly outlasted every invented alternative. Thon retreated to crossword puzzle clue territory, clued as "proposed genderless pronoun."