them

1. 1
   people or thingspronounplural

   The object form of 'they', used after a verb or preposition for people or things already mentioned.

   The coach praised them after the match.

   We invited them to dinner.

   UsageUse them after a verb or preposition (give them a chance, with them); use they as the subject: they called.

2. 2
   one personpronoun

   Used for one person, not a group, already mentioned whose gender is unknown or irrelevant, or, in twenty-first-century use, who is nonbinary; the object form of singular they.

   When the new manager starts on Monday, I'll introduce them to the team.

   A customer forgot an umbrella, so the clerk ran out to the parking lot after them.

   UsageCommon after someone, anyone or a person: tell them I called. A few style guides still object; repeating the noun avoids the issue.

   Note

   Singular they takes this form as an object, and nothing in the word marks one person rather than many: the antecedent does that work, whether a customer or a new manager. The nonbinary use is the twenty-first-century layer on an older habit of leaving gender unsaid.

3. 3
   those (pointing)determinerdialectal

   Those, used before a noun.

   Them shoes are too small for you.

   Who left them bags in the hall?

   Similarthose

   Note

   Dialect puts the object pronoun where standard English has those: them yellow ones, them children. Writers have long used it to mark a speaker. Kennedy did so in 1835, C.J. Dennis in The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke in 1915, and Conan Doyle in the 1920s. It often travels with other nonstandard grammar, as in the way them children is treated.

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