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The pronoun you (and its other forms) can be used as a generic or indefinite pronoun, referring to a person in general. A more formal equivalent is the indefinite pronoun one (reflexive oneself, possessive one's). For example, you should keep your secrets to yourself may be used in place of the more formal one should keep one's secrets to oneself.
Look up one, one's, or oneself in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. One is an English language, gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun that means, roughly, "a person". For purposes of verb agreement it is a third-person singular pronoun, though it sometimes appears with first- or second-person reference. It is sometimes called an impersonal pronoun.
The generic pronouns one and the generic use of you are sometimes called indefinite. These are uncontroversial pronouns. [9] Note, however, that English has three words that share the spelling and pronunciation of one. [1]: 426–427 determiner: I have one book; I'll have one too. noun: one plus two is three; pronoun: if one considers oneself ...
Indefinite pronoun. An indefinite pronoun is a pronoun which does not have a specific, familiar referent. Indefinite pronouns are in contrast to definite pronouns. Indefinite pronouns can represent either count nouns or noncount nouns. They often have related forms across these categories: universal (such as everyone, everything), assertive ...
Germanic. In German, the informal second-person singular personal pronoun du ("you")—just like in English—is sometimes used in the same sense as the indefinite pronoun man ("one"). [citation needed] In Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, these are also du and man. In Dutch the informal second-person singular personal pronoun je ("you")—just ...
Pronoun versus pro-form. Pronoun is a category of words. A pro-form is a type of function word or expression that stands in for (expresses the same content as) another word, phrase, clause or sentence where the meaning is recoverable from the context. [4] In English, pronouns mostly function as pro-forms, but there are pronouns that are not pro ...
Personal pronoun. Personal pronouns are pronouns that are associated primarily with a particular grammatical person – first person (as I), second person (as you), or third person (as he, she, it). Personal pronouns may also take different forms depending on number (usually singular or plural), grammatical or natural gender, case, and formality.
You is used to refer to an indeterminate person, as a more common alternative to the very formal indefinite pronoun one. [30] Though this may be semantically third person, for agreement purposes, you is always second person. Example: "One should drink water frequently" or "You should drink water frequently".