The word thou () is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you, although it remains in use in certain traditional dialects of Northern England and Scotland (also pronounced or today). Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative); the possessive is thy (adjective) or thine (as an adjective before a vowel or as a possessive pronoun); and the reflexive is thyself. When thou is the grammatical subject of a finite verb in the indicative mood, the verb form typically ends in -(e)st (e.g., "thou goest", "thou do(e)st"), but in some cases just -t (e.g., "thou art"; "thou shalt").
Originally, thou (in , ) was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. In Middle English, thou was sometimes represented with a scribal abbreviation that put a small "u" over the letter thorn: þͧ (later, in printing presses that lacked this letter, this abbreviation was sometimes rendered as yͧ). Starting in the 1300s, thou and thee were used to express familiarity, informality, or contempt, for addressing strangers, superiors, or inferiors, or in situations when indicating singularity to avoid confusion was needed; concurrently, the plural forms, ye and you, began to also be used for singular: typically for addressing rulers, superiors, equals, inferiors, parents, younger persons, and significant others. In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language, often regarded as impolite, but persisted, sometimes in an altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland,Shorrocks, 433–438. as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. The use of the pronoun is also still present in Christian prayer and in poetry.
Early English translations of the Bible used the familiar singular form of the second person, which mirrors common usage trends in other languages. The familiar and singular form is used when speaking to God in French (in Protestantism both in past and present, in Catholicism since the post–Vatican II reforms), German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Scottish Gaelic and many others (all of which maintain the use of an informal singular form of the second person in modern speech). In addition, the translators of the King James Version of the Bible attempted to maintain the distinction found in Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek between singular and plural second-person pronouns and verb forms, so they used thou, thee, thy, and thine for singular, and ye, you, your, and yours for plural.
In standard Modern English, thou continues to be used in formal religious contexts, in wedding ceremonies ("I thee wed"), in literature that seeks to reproduce archaic language, and in certain fixed phrases such as "fare thee well". For this reason, many associate the pronoun with solemnity or formality.
Many dialects have compensated for the lack of a singular/plural distinction caused by the disappearance of thou and ye through the creation of new plural pronouns or pronominals, such as yinz, yous and y'all or the colloquial you guys ("you lot" in England). Ye remains common in some parts of Ireland, but the examples just given vary regionally and are usually restricted to colloquial speech.
Grammar Because thou has passed out of common use, its traditional forms are often confused by those imitating archaic speech.
Declension The English personal pronouns have standardized declension according to the following table:
Conjugation Verb forms used after thou generally end in -est (pronounced ) or -st in the indicative mood in both the present and the past tenses. These forms are used for both strong and weak verbs.
Typical examples of the standard present and past tense forms follow. The e in the ending is optional; early English spelling had not yet been standardized. In verse, the choice about whether to use the e often depended upon considerations of meter.
to know: thou knowest, thou knewest to drive: thou drivest, thou drovest to make: thou makest, thou madest to love: thou lovest, thou lovedst to want: thou wantest, thou wantedst
Modal verbs also have -(e)st added to their forms: can: thou canst could: thou couldst may: thou mayest might: thou mightst should: thou shouldst would: thou wouldst ought to: thou oughtest to
A few verbs have irregular thou forms: to be: thou art (or thou beest), thou wast (or subjunctive thou wert; originally thou were) to have: thou hast, thou hadst to do: thou dost (or thou doest in non-auxiliary use) and thou didst shall: thou shalt will: thou wilt
A few others are not inflected: must: thou must
In Proto-English, the second-person singular verb inflection was -es. This came down unchanged from Indo-European and can be seen in quite distantly related Indo-European languages: Russian знаешь, znayesh, thou knowest; Latin amas, thou lovest. (This is parallel to the history of the third-person form, in Old English -eþ, Russian, знает, znayet, he knoweth, Latin amat he loveth.) The from -es to modern English -est, which took place separately at around the same time in the closely related German and West Frisian languages, is understood to be caused by an assimilation of the consonant of the pronoun, which often followed the verb. This is most readily observed in German: liebes du → liebstu → liebst du (lovest thou).
Comparison Early Modern English Modern West Frisian Modern German Modern Dutch Modern English Thou hast
You have She hath
She has What hast thou?
What do you have? (What have you?) What hath she?
What does she have? (What has she?) Thou goest
You go Thou doest
You do Thou art(variant thou beest)
You are
In Dutch, the equivalent of "thou", du, also became archaic and fell out of use and was replaced by the Dutch equivalent of "you", gij (later jij or u), just as it has in English, with the place of the informal plural taken by jullie (compare English y’all).
In the subjunctive and imperative moods, the ending in -(e)st is dropped (although it is generally retained in thou wert, the second-person singular past subjunctive of the verb to be). The subjunctive forms are used when a statement is doubtful or contrary to fact; as such, they frequently occur after if and the poetic and.
If thou be Johan, I tell it thee, right with a good advice ...;Middle English carol: If thou be Johan, I tell it theRyght with a good aduyceThou may be glad Johan to beIt is a name of pryce. Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart ...Eleanor Hull, Be Thou My Vision, 1912 translation of traditional Irish hymn, Rob tu mo bhoile, a Comdi cride. I do wish thou wert a dog, that I might love thee something ...Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, act IV, scene 3. And thou bring Alexander and his paramour before the Emperor, I'll be Actaeon ...Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus, act IV, scene 2. O WERT thou in the cauld blast, ... I'd shelter thee ...Robert Burns, O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast(song), lines 1–4.
In modern regional English dialects that use thou or some variant, such as in Yorkshire and Lancashire, it often takes the third person form of the verb -s. This comes from a merging of Early Modern English second person singular ending -st and third person singular ending -s into -s (the latter a northern variation of -þ (-th)).
The present indicative form art ("þu eart") goes back to West Saxon Old English (see OED s.v. be IV.18) and eventually became standard, even in the south (e.g. in Shakespeare and the Bible). For its influence also from the North, cf. Icelandic þú ert. The preterite indicative of be is generally thou wast.
Etymology Thou originates from Old English , and ultimately via Grimm's law from the Proto-Indo-European *tu, with the expected Germanic vowel lengthening in accented monosyllabic words with an open syllable. Thou is therefore cognate with Icelandic and Old Norse , German and Continental Scandinavian , Latin and all major Romance languages, Irish, Kurdish, Lithuanian and Latvian or , Greek (), Slavic ты / ty or ти / ti, Armenian (/), Hindi तू (), Bengali: তুই (tui), Persian () and Sanskrit त्वम् (). A cognate form of this pronoun exists in almost every other Indo-European language.Entries for thou and *tu, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
History Old and Middle English
In Old English, thou was governed by a simple rule: thou addressed one person, and ye more than one. Beginning in the 1300s thou was gradually replaced by the plural ye as the form of address for a superior person and later for an equal. For a long time, however, thou remained the most common form for addressing an inferior person.
The practice of matching singular and plural forms with informal and formal connotations is called the T–V distinction and in English is largely due to the influence of French. This began with the practice of addressing kings and other aristocrats in the plural. Eventually, this was generalized, as in French, to address any social superior or stranger with a plural pronoun, which was felt to be more polite. In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal.
General decline in Early Modern English Fairly suddenly in the 17th century, thou began to decline in the standard language (that is, particularly in and around London), often regarded as impolite or ambiguous in terms of politeness. It persisted, sometimes in an altered form, particularly in regional dialects of England and Scotland farther from London, as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. Reasons commonly maintained by modern linguists as to the decline of thou in the 17th century include the increasing identification of you with "polite society" and the uncertainty of using thou for inferiors versus you for superiors (with you being the safer default) amidst the rise of a new middle class.Nordquist, Richard (2016). "Notes on Second-Person Pronouns: Whatever Happened to 'Thou' and 'Thee'?" ThoughtCo. About, Inc.
In the 18th century, Samuel Johnson, in A Grammar of the English Tongue, wrote: "in the language of ceremony ... the second person plural is used for the second person singular", implying that thou was still in everyday familiar use for the second-person singular, while you could be used for the same grammatical person, but only for formal contexts. However, Samuel Johnson himself was born and raised not in the south of England, but in the West Midlands (specifically, Lichfield, Staffordshire), where the usage of thou persists until the present day (see below), so it is not surprising that he would consider it entirely ordinary and describe it as such. By contrast, for most speakers of southern British English, thou had already fallen out of everyday use, even in familiar speech, by sometime around 1650.Entry for thou in Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. Thou persisted in a number of religious, literary and regional contexts, and those pockets of continued use of the pronoun tended to undermine the obsolescence of the T–V distinction.
One notable consequence of the decline in use of the second person singular pronouns thou, thy, and thee is the obfuscation of certain sociocultural elements of Early Modern English texts, such as many character interactions in Shakespeare's plays, which were mostly written from 1589 to 1613. Although Shakespeare is far from consistent in his writings, his characters primarily tend to use thou (rather than you) when addressing another who is a social subordinate, a close friend or family member, or a hated wrongdoer.Atkins, Carl D. (ed.) (2007). Shakespeare's Sonnets: With Three Hundred Years of Commentary. Associated University Presses. p. 55.
Usage
In comparison with "you"