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), wilt (of will). Must does not change. In weak past tenses, the ending is either -edest or contracted -edst. In the subjunctive, as is normal, the bare form is usually used. 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.

Alternative forms

• du, tha, thoo, thow, thu

Derived terms

Translations

Related terms

• tutoy, tutoyer

Translations

Usage notes

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

Derived terms

• th'ast
• th'art
• yarthe