Whose

contraction, det, pron

contraction, det, pron ·1 syllable ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Determiner
  1. 1
    Of whom, belonging to whom; which person's or people's. interrogative

    "Whose (wallet) is this?"

  2. 2
    Honorific alternative letter-case form of whose, sometimes used when referring to God or another important figure who is understood from context. alt-of, honorific

    "Saviour, Whose love constrained them / To toil with zeal untired,"

  3. 3
    Of whom, belonging to whom. relative

    "This is the man whose dog caused the accident."

  4. 4
    Of which, belonging to which. relative

    "We saw several houses whose roofs were falling off."

Pronoun
  1. 1
    That or those of whom or belonging to whom. interrogative

    "Several people have lost their suitcases. Whose have you found?"

  2. 2
    That or those of whom or belonging to whom. relative

    "This car is blocking the way, but Mr Smith, whose it is, will be here shortly."

Contraction
  1. 1
    Misspelling of who's. alt-of, contraction, misspelling

Synonyms

All synonyms
which's

Example

More examples

"Being objective means not telling everybody whose side you are on."

Etymology

From Middle English whos, from Old English hwæs, from Proto-Germanic *hwes, genitive case of *hwaz (“who”) *hwat (“what”).

Related phrases

whose foot the shoe is onwhose ox is goredyou and whose army

More for "whose"

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Editorial Guides For "whose"

Who vs Whom: Keep It Correct Without Overthinking

A practical test for choosing who or whom in modern writing.

Its vs It’s: Possession vs Contraction

Master one of the most common apostrophe errors in English writing.

Next best steps

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.