First published 2026 May 1
A brief history of singular they from the Oxford English Dictionary.
Singular they was used in the Middle English poem William of Palerne, composed around 1350 as a translation of the French romance Guillaume de Palerne.
To see that the indefinite pronouns anyone, anybody, everyone, everybody, no one, and nobody are singular, look at the verb forms that follow them.
The 2011 update to the New International Version used singular they.
When I was a student at Central Bible College, one of my professors gave a lecture arguing that we shouldn't use singular they in Bible translation or in everyday life. I don't know whether he knew he was using singular they in his lecture slides. This language change was so ubiquitous that someone arguing against it failed to notice that he was using it in his own arguments.