English: who or whom?

Question

The woman (who/whom) I thought to be his mother proved a stranger.

Which should we choose, who or whom?

Answer 1

There are two things worth knowing about the use of the pronoun 'whom'. Firstly, in modern English usage it's considered rather formal and old-fashioned, although it does still sometimes appear in academic and official forms of writing. 'Who' is the modern equivalent that can be used either formally or informally and in spoken and written forms.

We are also more limited with the use of 'whom' grammatically, as it only appears as an object pronoun - so relating to or defining the object of the sentence, rather than the subject. For example, we might refer to the man to whom I spoke. In this case the man is the object, and I the subject. 'Whom' refers to 'the man', not me, and is preceded by the preposition 'to'. In modern everyday use, we'd be much more likely to say the man who I spoke to, with the preposition coming at the end of our sentence and creating a much more informal and colloquial effect.

'Who' is also flexible in that it can be both a subject or an object pronoun. So, the man who spoke to me or the man who I spoke to would both work. We can't do the same thing with 'whom' which is limited to defining our object.

Answer 2

Hard one, yes. Move the sentence around for understanding: The woman proved to be a stranger, WHOM I thought to be his mother. Whom is correct, because it is a direct object (object of what I thought). It would be WHO in this example, "The woman who bought peaches proved a stranger."

Answer 3

In American English, "whom" is virtually extinct, no matter what the British snobs, or Americans who want to be British snobs, will tell you. So if you are talking about American English, "who" will work here. Unless, of course, this is the answer on homework assigned by an English teacher (who, by definition, all want to be British snobs), in which case you must write "whom" even though no American English speaker would EVER say this.

Answer 4

The woman who I thought to be his mother....
Now, doesn't that sound odd? So, it's 'whom'. I suppose you don't need another answer, right, after getting so many...but atleast I'll manage an upper of 2 points.

Answer 5

"Who is used for a grammatical subject, where a nominative pronoun such as I or he would be appropriate, and whom is used as the object of a verb or preposition."

Answer 6

in this case -whom i thought to be the mother its posesive
who is the mother of this boy- is another story

Answer 7

You should use 'whom'! Whom always refers to one person!

Answer 8

'whom' and I am a Canadian who would say that:)