Etymology

whose

W4H4O1S1E1

Today it means: Of whom, belonging to whom; which person's or people's. Full definition →

Middle English whos ← Old English hwæs ← Proto-Germanic *hwes
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*hwes
  2. Old English · inherited fromhwæs
  3. Middle English · inherited fromwhos
  4. English todaywhose

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.