One pronoun

One (pronoun)

One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender neutral, third-person singular (though slightly anomalous) pronoun, commonly used in English prose. It is equivalent to the French pronoun on (upon which it may be modeled), or the German man, or the Spanish 'uno'.

Cases and usage

One may be used in the nominative, but (much unlike French on and German man) it can also be used in other cases. It occurs most commonly in sentences in the present simple tense or conditional constructions. Examples of its use:

Nominative

*One cannot help but grow older.

*If one were to fail, that would be unfortunate.

Accusative

Verbal object

*Drunkenness makes one unreliable.

Prepositional object

*A reputation travels with one.

Dative

*That dead-end job at least gives one a chance to develop as a person.

Genitive

The genitive form of one is one's, as in

*One's experiences shape one's expectations.

There is no strong form analogous to hers and yours: *One's is broken; *I sat on one's; *I broke one's.

Reflexive

A reflexive form oneself appears at times:

To quit smoking is like giving oneself a raise.

Oneself is anomalous in its inability to refer back to anything other than one:

* One exhausts oneself.

** Smith exhausted oneself.

Style and rhetoric

Some consider one to be overly formal, and avoid it. However, in doing so, they encounter problems only resolvable by awkward phrasings or a significant drop in formality. In particular, phrasing a sentence in a gender neutral way may require the passive voice, singular they, pluralizing, you, or circumlocution. In addition, the word one can also be used for inanimate objects, creating possible confusion in careless writing. For example,

If one chooses to disobey the rules, one must be dealt with.

The second one may co-refer with the first, or it may refer to a specific rule. (If this sentence were spoken at all, the second one would require distinctive intonation for the second interpretation.)

Etymology

One may have come into use as an imitation of French on. French on derives from Latin homo, nominative singular for human. It is distinct from the French word for the English numeral one un(e), which never appears as a pronoun.