One should use "one"!

January 10, 2006 8:53 PM

Why does one not use the word "one" more often when refering to people in general?

For example, when talking to a friend about crime in the neighbourhood you might say, "you have to be careful when walking the streets at night." But why does it sound so much more "intelligent" or even snobbish to instead say "one has to be careful when walking the streets at night", (subsitituting the word "you" for "one")?

It's can also be really confusing using "you" instead of "one" beacause the other person might think that you're talking directly to them by saying "you", whereas if you say "one" then they'd know that you're talking about people in general.

posted by Jase_B to writing & language (24 comments total)

A direct "you" is sometimes considered overly familiar, whereas the other sounds more distant and nuanced. Hence the air of snobbery.

"Oh, I'm not talking about you. That would be rude. Rather, we're discussing some other fellow..."
posted by frogan at 9:07 PM on January 10, 2006

The usage of 'one' in this way comes from French (well, Norman French) where it is much more common. In general it is technically correc to use 'one' wherever you might say 'a person'. As you say, 'you' often makes it feel like you're talking about the addressee.

Why does it sound 'refined'? Simply because French was the language of the upper classes in England for hundreds of years. It's the same reason why animals, and the meat that comes from them, have different names in English. "Pork" and "pig", "cow" and "beef", "sheep" and "mutton". In each case the animal is named using an anglo-saxon word and the meat is name with a word from French (porc, boeuf, mouton). Why? Because the proles, who spoke anglo-saxon/middle English look after the animals, and the nobs, who spoke Norman French, ate the meat.

Hope this helps.
posted by unSane at 9:11 PM on January 10, 2006

It's formal. "One might ask," assumes less than "You might ask."
posted by raaka at 9:12 PM on January 10, 2006

Why does one not use the word "one" more often when refering to people in general?

Slackness and reverse-snobbery.
posted by pompomtom at 9:16 PM on January 10, 2006

Try "someone" and "anyone," as in, "Anyone who walks the streets at night has to be careful." Same idea, but sounds much more casual.
posted by mediareport at 9:22 PM on January 10, 2006

I think unSane has it.

Latinate languages, and others, make a distinction between formal and informal pronouns. In German its "du" vs. "Sie" (it's not just a Latinate thing).

English does not make this distinction. But for a very long time, all things Latinate were considered proper, and thus emulated. So pull the pronoun "one" out of your ass to fill the gap, as this vulgar English did not have a formal pronoun.

That is, however, mostly (slightly informed) speculation. I don't remember reading an exact account of this. I don't know, for instance, if this is a development that came about during the Norman period, as unSane may be suggesting, or later, in the Renaissance when a bunch of wankers tried to "clean up" English, which usually meant making it more like some imagined version of Latin.

It's used less often because it's an artificial construct of academic (or "cultured" or "elite" or whatever term you prefer) English.
posted by teece at 9:25 PM on January 10, 2006

You is specific, one is general.

Also, in academic writing, one is often taught to not say "you" as it makes an assumption about the reader. If you say in an literature essay, for example, "You experience a sense of blah blah" it is assuming the reader is experiencing that sense. It destroys the illusion of objectivity that argumentative academic writing generally strives for. However, if you were to say "one," it isn't as bad (though if I were marking the paper I would probably still probably make some comment about it as I find it to be stylistically poor).

I'd suggest that saying "one" has the connotation of being associated with a different style of communication and so sounds out of place in common speech. I guess it is similar to people who never use contractions in everyday speech; it sounds strange to us because most people do.
posted by synecdoche at 9:41 PM on January 10, 2006

Hmm. My OED shows "one" used as a pronoun going as far back as 1297, as in indefinite pronoun.

At that time, "you" was a plural version of "thou," and also grew to be used as a formal address. So "one" doesn't seem to be strictly necessary, but I guess the plural nature of "you" might have bothered people, hence the usage of "one."

My Cable and Baugh History of the English Language does not address this in the 18th Century attempts to "fix" English, but I want to say that's where the widespread, formal use comes from today. Especially after the loss of "thou" for "you."

But I'm not entirely certain. Which is all just a long-winded way of saying, I don't think we use it all that often because it is a somewhat synthetic construct, rather than organic to the language. synecdoche's reasoning is that which I was taught for why "one" should be used in academic writing. I think that reasoning misunderstands the way "you" is really used in such situations, but it is the common teaching.

But still, academic English is taught to you after you already know conversational English, which really gets to the heart of why it's not common among people who are not fastidiously academic in their usage.
posted by teece at 9:49 PM on January 10, 2006

One puts the lotion in the basket.

Why does one not use the word "one" more often when refering to people in general?

Assuming that this is your question, and not just word history, it's cultural. Consider that American English has been influenced by many immigrant languages and has diverged from British English, where the one construction remains common. We had a more egalitarian society earlier, based around frontier informality, and so that relegated certain constructions to educated New Englanders. (If you don't think there's a class distinction today, just listen to country music or read a Red State blogger on John Kerry.) They're not really "educated" there, they may be normal English (e.g. pronouncing "vase" as "vozz"), but to others they sound snobbish.

It's no coincidence that British accents are favored by movie villains (e.g. Hans in Die Hard). It's become a class signifier, and so certain sounds or grammars are avoided by speakers not wishing the association. Look at Bush's affected Texas accent.
posted by dhartung at 10:24 PM on January 10, 2006

British English, where the one construction remains common

Only if you're a member of the royal family, or possibly Hugh Grant.
posted by Leon at 3:07 AM on January 11, 2006

from British English, where the one construction remains common--

Among the royal family and on Radio 3, but not elsewhere. There are a few dialectal forms of the neutral indefinite pronoun, and the possessive one's and reflexive oneself are still fairly common, albeit with a hint of archness ('one shouldn't blow one's own trumpet').

'One' and 'you' in this grammatical position both date back to around the same time (late ME), so it's not that one has supplanted the other: there's always been an regional and cultural interplay, especially if you include dialectal plural forms such as 'youse', 'y'all' or 'y'uns'.
posted by holgate at 3:17 AM on January 11, 2006

don't think we use it all that often because it is a somewhat synthetic construct, rather than organic to the language.

Only if you consider the absorption of Norman French forms after 1066 non-organic. That's a bit snarky, but it's always a bit dangerous to presume that the ease of a particular construction is due to its pedigree.
posted by holgate at 3:23 AM on January 11, 2006

To my ear, "one" is not just old-fashioned sounding but remote. Saying "you" seems to include the listener. Saying "one" keeps him at arm's length by deliberately leaving him out.
posted by nebulawindphone at 4:33 AM on January 11, 2006

Well, I use "one" perhaps rather more than is usual, and for precisely the reason you raise: to avoid confusion. Yes, it does sound a little formal and old-fashioned but I never let that sort of consideration stop me from using terms and constructions which I genuinely feel make communication more precise and unambiguous.
posted by Decani at 6:23 AM on January 11, 2006

And yes, French. The indefinite personal subject "on" is a perfectly normal part of the French language and I think English loses something valuable if it loses "one".
posted by Decani at 6:29 AM on January 11, 2006

I'm surprised at folk suggesting that only the very poshest of British people use 'one' - I'd say it's fairly common, and I certainly know a lot of distinctly un-posh folk who use it.
posted by jack_mo at 7:22 AM on January 11, 2006

You is specific, one is general.

You can also be unspecific by sloppy contextual usage.

It's more common to use the inclusive royal 'we' than the idealist 'one'. 'One' sounds archaic and almost scolding to my ears, even when said in a polite way.
posted by dobie at 7:39 AM on January 11, 2006

I use one all the time, usually but not always, when I don't want to imply the person I'm talking to did something. "One often sees trojan problems if one has been downloading warez".

It the pronoun equvilent of the airport's inspectors indefinate 'a': "Nine times out of ten it's an electric razor, but... every once in a while... it's a dildo. Of course, it's company policy never to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. We have to use the indefinite article 'a' dildo, never... 'your' dildo."
posted by Mitheral at 7:49 AM on January 11, 2006

I actually usually use "you" or "they" instead of "one" to avoid pronoun confusion, even though "one" would be more correct, especially when I'm talking about something gender-neutral.

You have to be more careful with your crap.

One has to be more careful with his/her/their/one's crap.

Forces me to choose between the annoying "his or her," the incorrect "their," saying "one" twice in one sentence, or picking a gender. I don't like those options.
posted by lampoil at 7:55 AM on January 11, 2006

Yeah, I find "one" pretty unnatural too, and only use it if I want to lend my remarks a sheen of poshness and/or pedantry.
posted by languagehat at 8:38 AM on January 11, 2006

One (or "on") in french is great because you hardly need to do any fancy conjugation in the spoken , and it's much easier to say than any of the other pronouns (it's almost a grunt). I think its popularity across the channel may have encouraged its use in Britain.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:15 AM on January 11, 2006

You realize, I hope, that on in modern French doesn't usually mean 'one'—it's the standard colloquial way to say 'we.' (And it occurs with the strengthening pronoun nous: "Mois, je vais..."/"Nous, on va...") Which makes it hard to see how it would be influencing cross-channel use these days.
posted by languagehat at 10:26 AM on January 11, 2006

I looked at the wrong entry in the OED. "He found one" goes back to 1297. "One should do this" goes back to 1477. And the word itself is from Old English "án." I doubt it was used for the same reasons in late Middle English or early modern English, as they still had the "thou/you" distinction, which seems to take care of the only problem with "you" (that is, it was too specific or informal. At that time "you" was both more formal and more distant that thou, which would have cleared up both of those objections, unless the writer was really hankering for an indefinite). I suspect common usage of "one" in this sense comes after the Normans.

I really think this was a 17th or 18th century adoption of an uncommon usage of "one" by the grammarians of the time trying to "fix" the language (and hence its less than universal acceptance, especially in speech), but I can't find anything to back that up, so I could be wrong.

It's an interesting question to me. I know I don't use it (except in very formal writing), because it feels very unnatural. And there is also this problem: "One should not doubt [oneself/himself]," which is annoying. "Oneself" is a word that sounds impossibly formal to my ear, and "himself" and "herself" have gender bias issues.

Frankly, I'd be much happier if we all just accepted "you" in this case (and the occasional singular "they," as well).

It also appears that this word would not be used in this way at all if Old English "man" (which served the same purpose, better, and was gender-free) hadn't narrowed.
posted by teece at 10:56 AM on January 11, 2006

The usage of 'one' in this way comes from French (well, Norman French) where it is much more common.

Well, the same construction is used in German ("man" in that context means "one": "Man muss fruh wachen"="One must awaken early").

After the Norman Conquest, the English language absorbed French to a large degree, but "one" can be traced back to German far earlier.
posted by zardoz at 7:39 PM on January 11, 2006