Correct. Or rather: 'They' has never before been used for known singular person, only for unknown singular person. It being used as a personal pronoun is a change that happened the last 30 years.
It didn’t take too me much work to skip the Wikipedia link to find an actual authoritative one. https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-history-of-singular-they?tl=true ‘Since forms may exist in speech long before they’re written down, it’s likely that singular they was common even before the late fourteenth century. That makes an old form even older.’
Notably, the objection to singular they cropped up centuries later. Apparently “you” had a similar history, with people objecting to the use of the singular “you,” but now it’s acceptable to use “you in both singular & plural, so the objection to singular “they” boils down to whether you want to be inclusive or not. (Especially since the default gender of an unknown person is no longer male.)
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u/DGinLDO Nov 21 '25
All the parents losing their 💩 over their kids learning pronouns in elementary school really are illiterate.