Thou, thee, thy and thine: how the old pronouns work

The four forms of thou

Thou is the subject form, the one that does the action: “Thou art kind.” Thee is the object form: “I thank thee.” Thy is the possessive that goes before a noun: “thy hand.” Thine is used before a vowel sound, as in “thine eyes,” and also on its own: “The choice is thine.” The reflexive form is thyself.

A quick test: if you could swap in “I,” use thou. If you could swap in “me,” use thee.

Singular and plural

Thou was the singular. Ye was the plural subject and you the plural object. Over time you also became the polite singular, and by the seventeenth century thou had dropped out of standard English, surviving in some dialects and in religious language.

That is why Shakespeare’s characters can switch between thou and you in the same scene. The choice can show closeness, anger or contempt as well as rank.

Verbs after thou

After thou, most present-tense verbs take -est or -st: thou knowest, thou lovest. A handful of common verbs have their own forms.

• are becomes art, and were becomes wert.
• have becomes hast, and do becomes dost.
• will becomes wilt, shall becomes shalt, and can becomes canst.

Verbs after he, she and it

The older third-person ending was -eth: he loveth, she knoweth. In Shakespeare’s time the plain -s ending was spreading, so writers of the period used both, and hath and doth stayed especially common.

Examples and common mistakes

“Thank you for your help” becomes “Thank thee for thy help.” “Do you know?” becomes “Dost thou know?” “Your eyes” becomes “thine eyes.”

The usual errors are using thou as an object (“I love thou”), putting -est on every verb, mixing you and thou in one sentence about the same person, and writing “ye” for “the.” That last one is a printing habit: the “y” stood in for the letter thorn (þ), so “ye olde shoppe” was really “the old shop.”