Usage Note: The use of
whose to refer to inanimate antecedents (as in
We could see a building whose roof was painted gold) has been criticized by usage commentators since the 1700s. The tradition holds that
whose should function only as the possessive of
who, and be limited in reference to persons. Nonetheless,
whose has been used to refer to inanimate things since the 1300s, and it appears in the works of many illustrious writers, including Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth. This use of
whose undoubtedly serves a useful purpose, since
which and
that do not have possessive forms, and the substitute phrase
of which is often cumbersome. Thus, the sentence
He pointed to a grove of trees whose trunks were coated with ice is made somewhat stilted by the avoidance of
whose: He pointed to a grove of trees, the trunks of which were coated with ice. As sentences become more complicated, the use of
of which can be especially clumsy. But the notion of
whose properly being a form of
who (and not
which) has considerable bearing on attitudes about the word. In our 2002 survey, only 44 percent of the Usage Panel approved of an example in which
whose refers to a river:
The EPA has decided to dredge the river, whose bottom has been polluted for years. The association of
whose with people undoubtedly influenced the Panel's response to an example that is syntactically similar to the previous one, in which the antecedent is a book, but the subject of the
whose clause is a person. Some 63 percent of the Panel accepted the sentence
The book, whose narrator speaks in the first person, is a mock autobiography. Note that this still leaves almost 40 percent of the Panel in disapproval. Because the alternative phrasing to
whose can be so awkward, there is often no easy solution to this problem except to recast the sentence to avoid
whose altogether. See Usage Notes at
else,
which,
who.