[quote=@whizzball1] What? We haven't dated the first usage. We noticed that Chaucer used it in the fourteenth century. That doesn't mean it was the earliest usage; in fact, it implies that the use of "they" could have been the common usage in speech (after all, literature is our only source of information on common language of the past). Furthermore, I already cited the earliest mention of "he" as a singular indefinite pronoun in literature; that is, Wilson in the sixteenth century, and he was only giving a passing remark saying that he thought it would be better if man was placed before woman in grammar. But my quote from Chaucer is a quote of [i]actual usage[/i], not just a quote of someone writing about theoretical usage. But if you can find me a literary quote where "he" is used as a gender-neutral pronoun before Chaucer in the fourteenth century, I'll reluctantly concede. But you'll be hard-pressed to find that, because Old English was still trying to find an identity by 1066 when the Normans took over Britain. In fact, English literature actually died down until the 1200s, when English began gaining acceptance. In 1362, English became the official language of England, and this is a few years before Chaucer began writing. The reference of "they" in Chaucer's writing came around the 1370s. The earliest English writing of the thirteenth century was Layamon's [i]Brut[/i], a poem describing the history of England, and it does not have any examples of usage of a pronoun referring to both males and females in a singular manner. (I've been doing my research.) [/quote] Not when we have one account of it. It could be a literary error for all we know. And if that's the only piece of ancient literature that we have that uses "their" as singular, it's safe to assume the rest of them used "his." Old English actually had a neutral term. Middle English had a semi-neutral term, which is connected to the modern term "he." "The third person singular neuter (it, also found in the older form hit) relates to the possessive his (not its!)" http://www.nativlang.com/middle-english/middle-english-grammar.php (As am I, but I'm not willing to spend as much time on it.)