What's the difference between who and whom?

Question

I am asking because my friends think I am a grammer geek, and I want to live up to my title.

Answer 1

Good for you, being a grammar geek, I like people who treat a language with respect! By the way.. it's spelled grammAr.. lol)

You are getting some long and seemingly complicated answers here, but it's easy: who is the subject (being a grammar geek you will know what that is) and whom is the object.. AND it whould be whom after any proposition: for whom, by whom, after whom etc etc.
Funny huh, someone whose native language is not English explaining this.. but then again, I learned English by the book, all the rules etc (ages ago).. so that's how I know.
Greetings from Holland!

Answer 2

Who and whom are both relative pronouns as in "I saw who ate the chocolate."

who is used when it replaces the subject (doer of the action) of the dependent clause, just like in the example above.

Whom is used when it replaces the object (receiver of the action) as in "The people know to whom the prize should go to." and "The police know whom the killer killed."

Whom now, I assume, is used for in Britain and formal occasions. The final -m is dropped and thus your question arises. It is just language development being ahead of written language.

Answer 3

often times it really is puzzling to inform if someone is shy or in the adventure that they are snobby. often times human beings in basic terms make an unfair assumption that someone who's quiet and shy is snobby, even as which couldn't be more effective from the actuality. For some reason human beings imagine that a quiet human being is searching down on them or has all of it at the same time, even as in shown actuality that human being in basic terms might want to not have a lot to assert or might want to not want to percentage their opinion continuously. human beings quite in basic terms want to stop making assumptions or save assumptions to themselves except they comprehend someone.

Answer 4

"whom" is objective case as in " To whom is Alex talking?" where "whom" is the object of the preposition "to". "Alex " is the subject of the verb "is talking".(Are people no longer warned not to end a sentence with a preposition?)
In the sentence "Who are you?" "who" is subjective case and is the subject of the verb "are". The infinitive verb "to be " in all its forms including "are" never has an object so "you" is also subjective case.You could also thus say"You are who?" but not "You are whom?"

Answer 5

It is one of those words that everyone has misused and misspelled so much that it doesn't make a lot of difference anymore. Whom is older and seems a little more formal.

Answer 6

I believe who is more than one person and whom is a single person


1 : what or which person or persons -- used as an interrogative -- used by speakers on all educational levels and by many reputable writers, though disapproved by some grammarians, as the object of a verb or a following preposition
2 : the person or persons that : WHOEVER
3 -- used as a function word to introduce a relative clause; used especially in reference to persons but also in reference to groups or to animals or to inanimate objects especially with the implication that the reference is really to a person -- used by speakers on all educational levels and by many reputable writers, though disapproved by some grammarians, as the object of a verb or a following preposition
whom
One entry found for whom.


Main Entry: whom
Pronunciation: 'hüm, üm
Function: pronoun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hwAm, dative of hwA who
objective case of WHO -- used as an interrogative or relative; used as object of a verb or a preceding preposition or less frequently as the object of a following preposition though now often considered stilted especially as an interrogative and especially in oral use -- occasionally used as predicate nominative with a copulative verb or as subject of a verb especially in the vicinity of a preposition or a verb of which it might mistakenly be considered the object
usage Observers of the language have been predicting the demise of whom from about 1870 down to the present day . Our evidence shows that no one--English or not--should expect whom to disappear momentarily; it shows every indication of persisting quite a while yet. Actual usage of who and whom--accurately described at the entries in this dictionary--does not appear to be markedly different from the usage of Shakespeare's time. But the 18th century grammarians, propounding rules and analogies, rejecting other rules and analogies, and usually justifying both with appeals to Latin or Greek, have intervened between us and Shakespeare. It seems clear that the grammarians' rules have had little effect on the traditional uses. One thing they have accomplished is to encourage hypercorrect uses of whom . Another is that they have made some people unsure of themselves .

Answer 7

WHO is the person to WHOM this question is ask.

Answer 8

"Who" is the question word for Subject.

"Whom" is the question word for Object.

Example:

(Alex) ( is talking) ( to Ace )
Subject Verb Object

If you ask:
WHO is talking to Ace?
The answer is: Alex

If you ask:
WHOM is Alex talking to?
The answer is: Ace

You can not say "who is Alex talking to?"
because it is grammatically wrong.

Hope this will help..

Answer 9

who wants to know, and of whom are we speaking?

Answer 10

whom is a more formal version of who for example-to whom it may concern, and who are you?