thou

English Online Dictionary. What means thou‎? What does thou mean?

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English thou, tho, thogh, thoue, thouȝ, thow, thowe, tou, towe, thu, thue, thugh, tu, you (Northern England), ðhu, þeou, þeu, þou (the latter three early Southwest England), from Old English þū, from Proto-West Germanic *þū, from Proto-Germanic *þū (“you (singular), thou”), from Proto-Indo-European *túh₂ (“you, thou”).

Alternative forms

• tha (Yorkshire, Lancashire)
• thow, thu, du (Scotland)
• thoo (Orkney)

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American):
  • enPR: thou, IPA^(key): /ðaʊ/
  • Rhymes: -aʊ
• (dialectal, Northern England, Scotland):
  • IPA^(key): /ðuː/

Pronoun

thou (plural ye, objective case thee, reflexive thyself, possessive determiner thy or thine, possessive pronoun thine)

1. (archaic, dialectal, literary, religion, or humorous) Nominative singular of ye (“you”). [chiefly up to early 17th c.]
   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:thou.

Usage notes

• When the subject of a verb in the indicative mood is thou, the verb usually ends in -est, in both the present and simple past tenses, as in “Lovest thou me?” (from John 21:17 of the King James Bible). This is the case even for modal verbs, which do not specially conjugate for the third person singular.
  • A few verbs have irregular present forms: art (of be), hast (of have), dost (of do), wost (of wit), canst (of can), shalt (of shall), and wilt (of will). Must does not change.
  • In weak past tenses, the ending is -edst, e.g., vowedst.
  • In the present subjunctive, as is normal, the bare form is usually used, e.g., "I ask that thou listen to me" (instead of listenest). However, thou beest is sometimes used instead of thou be.
• Traditionally, use of thou and ye followed the T–V distinction, thou being the informal pronoun and ye, the plural, being used in its place in formal situations. This is preserved in the dialects in which thou is still in everyday use, but in Standard English, due to the pronoun’s association with religious texts and poetry, some speakers find it more solemn or even formal.
• Occasionally thou was, and to a lesser extent still is, used to represent a translated language’s second-person singular-plural distinction, disregarding English’s T–V distinction by translating the second-person singular as thou even where English would likely use ye instead. It is also sometimes still used to represent a translated language’s T–V distinction.

Derived terms

Translations

See also

Etymology 2

From Late Middle English thouen, theu, thew, thou, thowe, thowen, thui, thuy (“to address (a person) with thou, particularly in a contemptuous or polite manner”), from the pronoun thou: see etymology 1 above.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: thou, IPA^(key): /ðaʊ/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

Verb

thou (third-person singular simple present thous, present participle thouing, simple past and past participle thoued)

1. (transitive) To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity.

   Synonym: thee

   Antonym: you
2. (intransitive) To use the word thou.

   Synonym: thee

   Antonym: you

Related terms

• tutoy, tutoyer

Translations

Etymology 3

Clipping of thou(sandth).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: thou, IPA^(key): /θaʊ/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

Noun

thou (plural thous)

1. (British) A unit of length equal to one-thousandth of an inch (25.4 µm).

   Synonym: (US) mil

Etymology 4

Clipping of thou(sand).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) enPR: thou, IPA^(key): /θaʊ/
• Rhymes: -aʊ

Noun

thou (plural thou)

1. (slang) A thousand, especially a thousand of some currency (dollars, pounds sterling, etc.).

Etymology 5

See though.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: thō, IPA^(key): /ðəʊ/
• (General American) enPR: thō, IPA^(key): /ðoʊ/

Adverb

thou (not comparable)

1. Misspelling of though.

Conjunction

thou

1. Misspelling of though.

References

Further reading

• thou on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• thou (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• Hout, Huot, hout

Middle English

Pronoun

thou (objective the, possessive determiner thy, possessive pronoun thyn)

1. Alternative form of þou

References

• “thǒu, pron.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 5 May 2018.

Scots

Alternative forms

• du, thoo

Etymology

From Middle English þou, from Old English þū, from Proto-Germanic *þū, from Proto-Indo-European *túh₂ (“you”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ðu/
• (Orkney, Shetland) IPA^(key): /du/

Pronoun

thou (objective case thee, reflexive thysel, possessive determiner thy)

1. (archaic outside Orkney and Shetland) thou, you (2nd person singular subject pronoun, informal)

Usage notes

• Regularly used throughout Scotland up until the middle of the 1800s; now only used as an archaism outside Shetland and Orkney.

References

• “thou, pers. pron, v.”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC.

Yola

Alternative forms

• th'

Etymology

From Middle English þou, from Old English þū, from Proto-West Germanic *þū.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ðuː/, /ð/

Pronoun

thou

1. thou

   Synonym: thee

Derived terms

• th'ast
• th'art
• yarthe

References

• Jacob Poole (d. 1827) (before 1828) William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, published 1867, page 31