éses

éses is a historical and orthographic variant of a Spanish demonstrative pronoun, used to mean “those ones” and to distinguish pronoun use from the corresponding demonstrative adjectives in earlier stages of the language. As a stressed form, it appeared in contexts where emphasis or disambiguation was desired, particularly in older texts and poetry.

In traditional Spanish grammar, accented demonstratives such as ése, ésa, ésos, and ésas served to mark pronoun use rather than adjective use. The form éses, the masculine plural, and its feminine counterpart ésas, are associated with this practice of diacritic differentiation. Over time, normative spelling shifted toward unaccented forms for general writing, and the use of accented demonstratives as pronouns has become largely archival or stylistic rather than standard.

Today, the accented pronoun forms are far less common in contemporary everyday Spanish. Most modern texts use the unaccented forms (esos, esas) for pronouns in regular prose, reserving any accented variants for historical quotes, literature that aims to reproduce older registers, or special discursive effects. When encountered, éses may signal archaism, emphasis, or regional variation and should be interpreted within that broader stylistic or historical context.

Related topics include other demonstrative pronouns and adjectives in Spanish (este, ese, aquel, and their plural forms), orthography guidelines from the Royal Spanish Academy, and the historical evolution of diacritics to distinguish word class and function.

See also: Spanish demonstratives, pronouns and adjectives, Royal Spanish Academy orthography, Diccionario panhispánico de dudas.