objective case

The case of a pronoun when it functions as one of the following:

• the direct or indirect object of a verb or verbal
• the object of a preposition
• the subject of an infinitive
• an appositive to an object

The objective (or accusative) forms of English pronouns are me, us, you, him, her, it, them, whom and whomever. (Note that you and it have the same forms in the subjective case.)

The objective case is also known as the accusative case.

See also:

• First-Person Pronouns
• Second-Person Pronouns
• Third-Person Pronouns
• Confused Words: I and Me
• Genitive (Possessive Case)
• Solecisms
• Subjective Case
• Using the Different Forms of Pronouns
• Who and Whom
• Whoever and Whomever

Examples and Observations:

• "To know her was to love her."
  (Samuel Rogers)



• "Please don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them."
  (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)



• "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
  (Friedrich Nietzsche)



• "To survive in this world, we hold close to us those people on whom we depend. We trust in them our hopes, our fears."
  (Mohinder Suresh, Heroes, 2008)



• "The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?"
  (Tennessee Williams, interview with Joanne Stang. The New York Times, March 28, 1965)



• "Give my regards to Broadway,
  Remember me to Herald Square . . .."
  (George M. Cohan)



• "When she asked him about birth control, he sat down beside her and talked for half an hour about what a great woman Margaret Sanger was and how birth control was the greatest single blessing to mankind since the invention of fire."
  (John Dos Passos, 1919, 1932)



• "The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday."
  (Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life. Translation first published by New Left Books, 1974)



• "And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up."
  (Roger Ebert)



• Correction
  "Mr. Cameron’s first visit to Washington as prime minister was meant as a way for he and Mr. Obama to tackle a series of issues vital to the two countries, in particular the war in Afghanistan and steps toward a global economic recovery.
  
  As many readers were quick to point out, this should be 'for him and Mr. Obama to tackle.' (The 'subject' of an infinitive in a construction like this is actually in the objective, or accusative, case: 'I want him to go,' not 'I want he to go.')"
  (Philip B. Corbett, "Everything Old Is Hip Again." The New York Times, Sep. 7, 2010)



• "In Present-day English the contrast between nominative [subjective] and accusative [objective] is found with only a handful of pronouns. At earlier stages of the language the contrast applied to the whole class of nouns but the inflectional distinction has been lost except for these few pronouns."
  (Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)