FromMiddle Englishwhoever. Bysurface analysis,who +ever.
whoever (nominative case,objectivewhomever,possessivewhosever)
- (interrogative)Whoever:an emphatic form ofwho.
Whoever thought up that stupid idea?
- (fused relative) Any person or persons that.
Whoever breaks the law will be punished.
- (fused relative) The person that (no matter who).
Whoever robbed that old lady ought to be locked up.
I don't know what it is. Askwhoever put it there.
- Regardless of the person or persons that.
Whoever stole the painting, the police will catch the thief in no time.
- (informal) Any person or persons.
I don't care who gets it; give it towhoever.
- Misspelling ofwhoever other than in interrogative use.
- *He is the tallest manwhoever lived. (incorrect usage)
2014 July 13, Peter FitzSimons, “Ian Thorpe acknowledges he's gay, let's hope he's now happy as well”, inSydney Morning Herald:When the gays can claim the toughest bastardwhoever pulled on a football boot as one of their own, ...
- Who is asubjectpronoun.Whom is anobject pronoun. To determine whether a particular sentence uses a subject or an object pronoun, rephrase it to usehe/she/they orhim/her/them instead ofwho,whom; if you usehe,she orthey, then you use the subject pronounwho; if you usehim,her orthem, then you use the object pronoun. The same rule applies towhoever/whosoever/whoso andwhomever/whomsoever/whomso. In the case ofwho(m)(so)ever, which usually plays a role in two phrases at once, it is the role in the internal ("downstairs") clause that determines the case. For example,Sell the sofa towhoeveroffers the most money for it useswhoever because it is the subject of the verboffers; the fact that it is also the object ofto is irrelevant.
- Who can also be used as an object pronoun, especially in informal writing and speech (hence one hears not onlywhom are you waiting for? but alsowho are you waiting for?), andwhom may be seen as (overly) formal; in some dialects and contexts, it is hardly used, even in the most formal settings. As an exception to this, fronted prepositional phrases almost always usewhom, e.g. one usually sayswithwhom did you go?, not *withwho did you go?. However, dialects in whichwhom is rarely used usually avoid fronting prepositional phrases in the first place (for example, usingwho did you go with?).
- The use ofwho as an object pronoun is proscribed by many authorities, but is frequent nonetheless. It is usually felt to be much more acceptable than the conversehypercorrection in whichwhom is misused in place ofwho, as in *the savagewhom spoke to me.
- Instead ofwhat orwhich, particularly in music and sports journalism, although a solecism in conventional or traditional grammar,who andwhom are also used with names of collective nouns that define or describe groups of people, for instance singularly-named musical groups or sports clubs, in addition to teams with plural names of anthromorphic non-human beings or inanimate entities.
any person or persons that
- Arabic:مَنْ (ar)(man)
- Aromanian:tsenushcari
- Bulgarian:който и да е(kojto i da e)
- Classical Nahuatl:āquin
- Danish:hvem der end,enhver som
- Dutch:wie (dan) ook
- Esperanto:kiu ajn
- Finnish:kuka tahansa,kuka ikinä
- French:quiconque (fr),qui que ce soit (fr) qui
- German:wer immer,wer auch immer
- Greek:όποιος (el)(ópoios)
- Ancient:ὅστις(hóstis),ὁστισοῦν(hostisoûn)
- Hungarian:akárki (hu),bárki (hu)
- Indonesian:siapa pun (id)
- Irish:cibé,pé
- Italian:chiunque (it)
- Latin:quisquis (la),quicumque
- Maltese:kulmin
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål:den som,enhver som
- Polish:ktokolwiek (pl)
- Portuguese:quem (pt),quem quer que
- Romanian:oricare (ro)
- Russian:кто́быни(któ by ni),кто́бы (то)ни́бы́ло(któ by (to) ní býlo),ктоуго́дно(kto ugódno)
- Scottish Gaelic:ge be cò
- Spanish:cualquier (es) m,cualesquiera (es) m pl orf pl,cualquiera (es),quien (es),quien sea,quienquiera (es),quienquier
- Tagalog:sinuman
- Ugaritic:𐎎𐎐(mn),𐎎𐎐𐎋(mnk)
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