One (pronoun)

One is a pronoun in the English language. It is a gender-neutral, indefinite pronoun, meaning roughly "a person". For purposes of verb agreement it is a third-person singular pronoun, although it is sometimes used with first- or second-person reference. It is sometimes called an impersonal pronoun. It is more or less equivalent to the Scots 'a body', the French pronoun on, the German/Scandinavian man, and the Spanish uno. It has the possessive form one's and the reflexive form oneself.

The pronoun one has quite formal connotations (particularly in American English), and is often avoided in favor of more colloquial alternatives such as generic you.

The word one as a numeral can also be put to use as a pronoun, as in one was clean and the other was dirty, and it can also be used as a prop-word, forming pronominal phrases with other determiners, as in the one, this one, my one, etc. This article, however, concerns the use of one as an indefinite pronoun as described in the preceding paragraphs.

One may have come into use as an imitation of French on. French on derives from Latin homo, nominative singular for human, through Old French hom[me]. It is distinct from the French word for the numeral one, un(e). One is related to old Norse einn, Old German ein and Latin unus.

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