Ve/Ver
Ve/ver is a neopronoun with a science-fiction pedigree: ve, ver, vis, vis, verself, best known from Greg Egan's novels.
- ve
- ver
- vis
- vis
Said: vee / vur / viz / viz / vur-SELF
The forms
| Subject | veve is here |
|---|---|
| Object | verI saw ver |
| Possessive | visvis book |
| Possessive (standing alone) | visthat is vis |
| Reflexive | verselfby verself |
In a sentence
What it is
Ve does the job of he or she; ver is the object; vis is the possessive in both positions; verself is the reflexive. It is short, it is not a word that means anything else, and it has the odd distinction of being more familiar to readers of science fiction than to most people who write about gender.
Compared with sets built on she/her, this one is a small hybrid: the object form ends in r like her, the possessive ends in s like his. That trips people the first few times. "I gave ver vis book" is correct, and it settles after a few repetitions.
How to use it
- Ve takes the singular verb: "ve is", "ve has", "ve does".
- Ver is the object only: "I called ver", "give it to ver". Vis is the possessive in both positions: "vis coat" and "the coat is vis". Do not say "ver coat", which is the most common slip.
- Say ve to rhyme with see, ver to rhyme with her, vis to rhyme with his. Verself is ver plus self.
- Ve and we can blur in a noisy room. If you are misheard, say the person's name and repeat. Not a lecture, one word.
- Slip, fix, continue: "he, sorry, ve, said the meeting moved."
Getting used to it
- Say the row aloud three times: ve, ver, vis, vis, verself. The two-form possessive is the thing to lock in; everything else is one syllable.
- Write a sentence with the object and the possessive next to each other: "I handed ver vis keys." Then another. That pairing is where mistakes happen, so practise the pairing.
- Read a page of Egan if you have one on the shelf. The set was designed to be read at length without effort, and that is what it does.
Where it comes from
Proposed more than once, and the accounts do not all agree. Wiktionary records a proposal by a writer signing as Philologus in the Ladies' Repository of July 1864, and a revival by Varda One in 1970. Wikipedia credits the New Zealand writer Keri Hulme in the 1980s, and Pronouns.page places it in her novel The Bone People. Everyone agrees the set was used by Greg Egan, for non-gendered characters, in Distress and Diaspora in the 1990s. No single coiner can be named honestly.
Questions people ask
Why is the possessive vis and not vers?
Because that is how the set is used, in fiction and by the people who take it from there. Wiktionary lists vers as a possessive noun too, but the form on record in Wikipedia's table, on Pronouns.page and in the novels is vis for both positions. When two references disagree, the person in front of you is the tie-breaker.
Did Greg Egan invent ve/ver?
No. He used it, in Distress and Diaspora, for characters who had no gender, and he is the reason most people have met it. Proposals for ve go back to 1864 on Wiktionary's record, and Wikipedia credits Keri Hulme before Egan. Using is not inventing, and the honest answer is that the coiner is not settled.
Other sets
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