 The pronoun "one" has formal connotations (particularly in American English), and is often avoided in favour of more colloquial alternatives such as generic "you".The word "one" as a numeral is also used as a pronoun, as in "one was clean and the other was dirty".It is also used as a prop-word, forming pronominal phrases with other determiners, as in "the one", "this one", "my one", etc.