Originally Posted by Non Serviam

Shakespeare gets whom wrong, as does the King James Bible. It's really complex. Really really complex. It goes right back to the roots of our language.

Modern English has basically three cases (nominative, objective, possessive) but whom doesn't really belong to any of them. Middle English used to have four or five cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative-- and a vestigial vocative case transplanted from Greek, which only really survives in the word "O". You still see the vocative in romantic poetry from time to time... "O Wordsworth, thou king among poets," style of thing).

Whom is another vestige of that time--so it's the grammatical equivalent of male nipples. Something with no remaining purpose that's still there.

It's the dative form of "who".

In theory "dative" means the indirect object of a sentence (where "accusative" means the direct object), so dative and accusative are sort of sub-categories of the objective as we now understand it.

In practice, the dative is almost always governed by prepositions. So you might say that "whom" is what you use when you want to say "who" after a preposition.

What's a preposition? It's a word from the following list: aboard, about, above, absent, across, after, against, along, alongside, amid, amidst, among, amongst, around, as, aslant, astride, at, athwart, atop, barring, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, besides, between, beyond, but, by, despite, down, during, except, failing, following, for, from, in, inside, into, like, minus, near, next, notwithstanding, of, off, on, onto, opposite, out, outside, over, past, per, plus, regarding, round, save, since, than, through, throughout, till, times, to, toward, towards, under, underneath, unlike, until, up, upon, via, with, within, without, worth.

... and even that's not the whole rule because you can sometimes use "whom" for the subject of a sentence (a "nominative whom"). But, unless you're very sure you know what you're doing, don't.

Originally Posted by Loulou

Thanks to the judges, for your discerning taste, your valiant efforts and for so readily accepting sexual bribes in exchange for good marks. Eggo said he'll offer the same next time, plus extra, if you make him the only winner.

Originally Posted by Tiamat10

Just curious here. The way I always thought of it is that if the 'who/whom' in question could be answered by a subject pronoun (he/she) than it's 'who' but if it could be answered by a object pronoun (him/her) than it's whom.

Like, "Jason threw a book at James who dodged to his left." Who dodged to his left? HE did.

Or, "The man with whom I spoke was Frank." Whom was I speaking with? With HIM.

Is that an accurate way of doing it or have I been doing it wrong all these years?

Originally Posted by Non Serviam

It's as accurate as almost anyone else's.

In the Ghostbusters tag line, should it be "Who you gonna call" or "Whom you gonna call?" (NB: There isn't a correct answer, there are arguments for both. I'm asking your opinion, not setting a test.)

Originally Posted by Tiamat10

Based off my own rationale, I would say it's 'whom'. But, hypocrite that I apparently am, I would never actually say whom when speaking (or writing).

That's some catch, that Catch-22.

Originally Posted by Truth-Teller

What is the next topic?

I might join in...

Originally Posted by Non Serviam

It's as accurate as almost anyone else's.

In the Ghostbusters tag line, should it be "Who you gonna call" or "Whom you gonna call?" (NB: There isn't a correct answer, there are arguments for both. I'm asking your opinion, not setting a test.)