What is the difference between Whom and Who?

Question

I am confused over when to use Whom or Who in a sentence.

Answer 1

whom
used to introduce a question asking about the name or identity of a person or people
Whom did you expect to see?

Who
used to introduce a question asking about the name or identity of a person or people
Who's that at the door?
Who did you see there?

Answer 2

I'm not sure the best way to explain it but they are different.

'Whom' is on the receiving end of the action.

To Whom it may concern
You are going out with whom?

Who cares?
Who is the NFL's leading rusher?

When in doubt, use 'Who' as no one but a grammar junkie will question it.

Edit: some other posters hit it on the head. Whom is the object. Who is the subject. Use who when you want to describe the actor and whom when you need to describe the receiver of the action.

Answer 3

Okay. Who is a subject, so you use it when the person you're referring to is person performing the action of the sentance. For example:

Who took the cookies from Jane?

Whom is an object, so is used in the predicate part of the sentance, as the person being acting upon. For example:

From whom did Jody take the cookies?

In the second example, Jody is the subject. Got it?

Answer 4

The grammar junkies are right. Subject and object.

Who are you?
Who is the president of America?
Who is the best dancer JLo or Britney?
The one who is always laughing.

To whom it may concern
With whom do you wish to speak?
The lady to whom you refer so disrespectfully is standing right behind you.

Answer 5

You use whom for what's called the 'indirect object' of a sentence.

In a sentence such as "The man sends a parcel to the child"...

1. 'the man' is the 'subject' of the sentence (the thing/person that carries out the verb (action) 'to send')

2. 'the parcel' is the 'object'/'direct object' of the verb/action 'to send' i.e. the thing directly affected by the action 'to send'.

3. 'the child' is the 'indirect object' of the action/verb 'to send', the thing indirectly affected by the action 'to send'. They receive the parcel, but they are not themselves 'sent'. The indirect object is usually preceded by a preposition, a short word indicating the space/time/other relationship of the direct object to the direct object/action.

In the question "To whom may I send the parcel?", we use 'whom' because its the indirect object of the sentence.

Note that English has 2 alternate word orders for statements, one with a preposition and one without and with the direct and indirect objects in a different order. Both are correct English. e.g.

John gives the pencil to paul (subject verb direct-object preposition indirect-object)

and

John gives paul the pencil (subject verb indirect-object direct-object)

Answer 6

who forms the subjective case and so should be used in subject position in a sentence.
who did this?
whom forms the objective case and so should be used in object position in a sentence
with whom am i speaking

Answer 7

who is the subject relative pronoun and whom is the object relative pronoun.

The formula is: who+ verb or whom+sub+verb

"Who" is a subject, as in "Who did this?"

The object is "whom", as in "To whom shall I give this?"

but still, there are many arguments about this, please see source :)

Answer 8

An easy way to rebember is to compare it to I and ME.
e.g. If you have the word 'to' in front of it it is always Whom!

To whom?...To me You would n't say 'To I' would you so you would n't say 'TO who' either. The same goes for 'from'.

Who did that? From whom did you get that?

Answer 9

'Whom' is used when the person you're asking about would be a 'him' or 'her'. 'Who' is used in the case of other pronouns.
For example: you would ask, 'whom did you see?', because the answer would be, 'I saw him (or her).'
In the other case, you would say, 'who is she (or he)?'
I hope this makes sense.

Answer 10

Ok. I've seen some really good answers on here but some of them could have been explained more clearly.

First of all, as many other people have pointed out, the word 'who' is a pronoun. That is, it replaces the name of a person.

E.g. 'The boy who lived' (Harry Potter and the Philopsopher's stone). In this case, the word 'who' (pronoun) refers to 'the boy' (a noun-because boy is a 'naming' word-i.e. what we call a young male human!).

Like many other languages (e.g. French and German), the English language has different types of nouns (naming words) and pronouns (words which replace naming words) in a sentence. All of these different types of nouns and pronouns are collectively referred to as 'cases'. In English, there are 4 cases:

Nomative
Accusative
Dative
Genitive.

The case (type of noun/pronoun that you use) depends on the position of the word in a sentence. In a typical sentence, you have someone/something doing something which affects something else. In a sentence:

The person/thing doing something is called the 'subject'.

The 'doing' word is the verb.

'The thing/person effected by the verb' is the object. In English grammer, there are 2 types of objects:

Direct and indirect.

A direct object is the 'first/person' or thing effected by the verb.

An indirect object is the 'second/third/fourth etc' person/thing effected by the verb.

The nomative case-is used to refer to the person/thing which is doing something (subject) in a sentence.

The accusative case-is used to refer to the 'first person'/thing effected by the 'doing word'/action (direct objective)

The dative case-is used to refer to the 'second'/'third' etc person/thing effected by the 'doing' word/action (indirect object)

The genitive case- is used to refer to possession (i.e. belonging to someone/something).

For each case, the endings of words like 'who' change according to the case that you use.

E.g. The boy who lived is nomative. Why? 'Who' refers to the boy and who lives? The boy, so 'who' is the subject of the sentence and therefore in the nomative case. 'Who' in the nomative case is written as 'who'

E.g2. The man whom I love. Why? 'Whom' refers to the man and who do I love? The man (love is the 'doing word' and the first person effected by the 'doing word' is the man (indirect object)), so 'who' is the direct object of the sentence and therefore in the accusative case. 'Who' in the accusative case is written as 'whom'.

NB. We tend to use 'who instead' of 'whom' nowadays (as whom is considered to be old-fashioned). This is grammactically wrong, but widely accepted and probably explains why so many people get the nomative and accusative cases mixed up when studying foreign languages at advanced level (e.g they get confused about when to use 'whom and 'who' like you).

Eg3 The woman to whom I gave the bunch of flowers. The woman is the 'second etc' person effected by the 'doing word' (me giving the flowers), so the woman is an indirect object and 'to whom' refers to the woman, so 'to whom' and the woman are therefore in the dative case. The dative form of 'who' is 'whom' plus the preposition (connecting word). In this case, the connecting word (preposition) is 'to', so you would write 'who' as 'to whom' when using the dative case in this sentence.

NB. Many people studying foreign languages at advanced level also get the accusative and dative cases mixed up because most people tend to say/write 'The woman who I gave the bunch of flowers to'. Again, this is grammatically wrong, but widely accepted and I have to confess, I also do this everytime I speak to people (I try to avoid doing this in writing)!

E.g4. The woman whose knife I borrowed. The knife belongs to the woman, the woman owns the knife and 'who' refers to the woman, so 'who' is in the genitive case in this sentence and is therefore written as 'whose'.

In summary, the difference between 'whom' and 'who' (apart from the 'm') is that 'who' refers to the person/thing doing something (the subject) and 'whom' refers to the 'first' person/thing effected by the 'doing word' (direct object). If you are referring to the part of a sentence describing the person/thing that does something, it is called the nomative case. If you are referring to the part of the sentence describing the 'first' person/thing effected by the doing word, it is called the accusative case. In the nomative case, 'who' is written as 'who' and in the accusative case, who is written as 'whom'.

This is a long answer but I hope that it is clear and answers your question!

For further information on this, I suggest that you read an A-level grammar book on the languages taught in schools and colleges.

E.g. Schaum's grammar series are good.