pron.
Abbreviation with 2 meanings
| Stands for | Pronoun |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 2 |
| Categories | Writing & Everyday |
pron. has two meanings. It stands for Pronoun (grammar and dictionary) or Pronunciation (grammar and dictionary).
Meanings of pron. at a glance
| # | pron. stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pronoun | Writing & Everyday › Grammar and Dictionary |
| 2 | Pronunciation | Writing & Everyday › Grammar and Dictionary |
1. Pronoun
Writing & Everyday · Grammar and Dictionary Abbreviations
Marks a word that stands in for a noun or noun phrase, such as "she," "it," "who," "this" or "someone." Dictionaries describe pronouns further as personal, possessive, relative, demonstrative or indefinite.
Example: whom (pron.) the object form of "who": "To whom should I address the letter?"
English personal pronouns keep separate case forms (I/me, he/him), the last remnant of an older case system. Singular "they" has been recorded for centuries, and Merriam-Webster named "they" its word of the year in 2019 for its nonbinary use. In some dictionaries pron. also means "pronunciation," so its position in the entry tells the two apart.
2. Pronunciation
Writing & Everyday · Grammar and Dictionary Abbreviations
Introduces the pronunciation of a word in dictionaries, glossaries, news style guides and language textbooks, usually followed by a respelling or an IPA transcription.
Example: Worcestershire (pron. WUUS-ter-sher) is a county in the West Midlands of England.
American dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster use their own respelling systems between backslashes, while British and learner's dictionaries use the International Phonetic Alphabet between slashes. Broadcasters and wire services give pronunciations of unfamiliar names as capitalized respellings, with the stressed syllable in capitals. The label appears mainly in glossaries and older references; most dictionaries show pronunciation without any label.