Who vs. Whom

Let's talk about the grammatical elephant in the room: who vs. whom. Spoiler alert: whom is not just a fancy way of saying who.

Both words are pronouns, but you use who when referring to the subject of a clause and whom when referring to the object of a clause.

Whom do you worship? Tom Brady. Who worships you? Probably not Tom Brady, but he will when you surpass him as the greatest football quarterback of all time. Hey, it could happen.

The best test is plugging in the word "him." If it works—you could easily replace the Q&A "Whom do you worship? Tom Brady" with "Whom do you worship? Him"— then you should use whom. Match the M with the M.

One last thing before we go: plenty of people are in favor of getting rid of whom altogether. While your English teacher might be a stickler for it, most people won't fault you for a slip-up.