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whoever (subject)

  • The person or people who; any person who
  • it does not matter who

whomever(object)

  • when whatever person or people is/are the object of a sentence.
  1. I want to speak to whoever is in charge.
  2. I want to speak to whomever is in charge.

I think the second is correct because the subject wants to speak to the person, who is the object.

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  • I'm interested to hear from the grammarians, because "whom" is supposed to be used for the object of a sentence. I expect the proper usage is whomever.
    – Michael Curtis
    Commented Apr 24 at 17:37
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    @MichaelCurtis - believe me, educated older British speaker, nobody says 'whomever'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 24 at 17:57
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    Everybody would use: To whom it may concern.
    – Lambie
    Commented Apr 24 at 18:31
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    Note the declining use of 'whom' over the last 200 years.
    – Weather Vane
    Commented Apr 24 at 19:37
  • In both BrE and AmE "to whoever" is used much more than "to whomever" over the years. "to whomever" is mostly used in Fiction, followed by TV/Movies and then newspaper and magazines. In BrE "to whomever" is hardly used, even if it is used it is used in Fiction and in Academic writings.
    – Man_From_India
    Commented Apr 26 at 15:08

2 Answers 2

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The first is correct. "Whoever is in charge" is a noun clause (functioning as the object of the preposition "to"). Within this noun clause, "whoever/whomever" is in the subject position of "is in charge". So it needs to be in subjective case, i.e. "whoever".

Edit for further clarification: "to" case-marks the whole noun clause as objective, but it does not case-mark the pronoun inside the clause. The pronoun inside a clause is case-marked by the clause's verb, "is", as subjective. (If the OP's example were "I want to speak to whoever/whomever" full stop, then "to" would case-make the pronoun as objective, and "whomever" would have been correct.)

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  • Whoever is in charge should step forward. versus: I want to speak to whomever is in charge. aka by many as whoever.
    – Lambie
    Commented Apr 24 at 18:32
  • @Lambie, that's the exact distinction I was thinking of. Unless using informal English. I understand whom has fallen out of common usage.
    – Michael Curtis
    Commented Apr 24 at 19:56
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The first is not wrong, because if it works with whom, it works with who

Who/whom is, put simply, a can of worms that really should stay shut. If you want to know whether you can use "whom" or not, ask the question and see if the answer is "him/her/them" or not

If it is, then go use "whom", if not it's "who"

put simply: he -> who him -> whom

E.g.:

"Whom did you bring to start this whole mess?" "I brought him!"

Instead of taking this mental burden tho, it's far easier to just... use "who", which works in everything "whom" would be used in, and then some!

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  • +1. As you say, just use 'who'.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Apr 26 at 10:34

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