Is thou an archaic word?
Is thou an archaic word?
The word thou /ðaʊ/ is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word you.
What is the archaic word of thee?
(ðiː ) pronoun. Thee is an old-fashioned, poetic, or religious word for ‘you’ when you are talking to only one person. It is used as the object of a verb or preposition. I miss thee, beloved father.
When did thee and thou stop being used?
By the seventeenth century, thee/thou was generally used to express familiarity, affection, or contempt, or to address one’s social inferiors (Lass, 149). By 1800, both unmarked and marked uses of thee and thou, had become virtually obsolete in Standard English (Denison, 314).
Is thou informal or formal?
Thee and Thou Were English’s Informal Pronouns Yup. You was formal, and thou was informal. In a book called The Personal Pronouns in the Germanic Languages, Stephen Howe says that in the fifteenth to sixteenth centuries, thou was generally used to address someone who was socially inferior or an intimate.
What is the difference between thee and thou?
Thou and thee are obsolete forms of the pronoun you. Both are the second person singular pronouns, but whereas thou is subject case, thee is object case pronoun. Thee is not used as a subject, whereas thou is used as a subject.
What is the plural of thee?
Answer. The plural form of thee is thees. Find more words! Another word for.
Why do we not use thou anymore?
The pronoun that had previously been restricted to addressing more than one person (ye or you) started to see service as a singular pronoun. As a result, poor thou was downgraded, and was used primarily when referring to a person of lower social standing, such as a servant.
What is difference between thee and thou?
What happened to thee and thou?
Formerly we used thou as the second person singular pronoun (which simply means that we would use thou to address another single person). Thee was used in the objective or oblique case (when referring to the object of a verb or preposition), and thou was used in the nominative (when indicating the subject of a verb).