Who or whom ?

Question

the wind gives encouragement to who knows how to sail or the wind gives encouragement to whom knows how to sail.which one is the correct grammaticaly?

Markroe · Accepted Answer

Anonymousthe wind gives encouragement to who knows how to sail or the wind gives encouragement to whom knows how to sail.which one is the correct grammaticaly?

They both sound awkward. A better way to say it might be "The wind gives encouragement to the one [or "person] who knows how to sail."

LouiseT · Answer

Certainly in the UK the word "whom" is used less and less frequently.

Technically you should use whom instead of “who” as the object of a verb or a preposition. What we tend to do is to say the sentence another way and use "who".

Examples:

To whom do you wish to speak. : Who do you wish to speak to.

I met a man with whom I used to work. : I met a man who I used to work with.

The sentences with "whom" sound very old fashioned.

BillJ · Answer

Anonymousthe wind gives encouragement to who knows how to sail or the wind gives encouragement to whom knows how to sail.which one is the correct grammaticaly?

This is not about whether "who" or "whom" is correct - that choice only arises in basic relative clauses like these:

"That's the guy [who stole my car]", where "who" is the subject: "that guy stole my car.

"That's the guy [whom I love]", where "whom" is the object: "I love that guy".

"That's the guy [to whom I'm engaged]", where "whom" is the object of "to": "I'm engaged to that guy".

In each of those examples, the underlined relative word refers to the noun "guy". These are straightforward examples of what relative clauses do, which is (usually) to modify nouns, like "guy".

Now look at your sentence: "The wind gives encouragement to who/whom knows how to sail".

It's clearly different to the "guy" examples, for this time it's not obvious who the relative words "who" or "whom" are referring to; in other words it doesn't tell us who it is that knows how to sail. The answer is that neither "who" nor "whom" work here - they are both ungrammatical; instead the choice is between two special kinds of relative word where the person who is being referred to (the antecedent) and the "who" or "whom" relative words are fused into the single relative words "whoever" and "whomever", which mean "the person who" and "the person "whom". So, the correct version of your example should be "The wind gives encouragement to whoever (i.e. the person who) knows how to sail".

BillJ

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