Thou
adv, conj, noun, pron, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A unit of length equal to one thousandth of an inch (25.4 µm).
"We just wanted to take off a few thou, which we easily did with fine sandpaper."
- 2 A thousand, especially a thousand of some currency (dollars, pounds sterling, etc.). slang
"Whoa there, big spender — that'll cost you a few thou. Are you sure you can afford it?"
- 3 the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100 wordnet
- 1 To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity. transitive
"Don’t thou them as thous thee! – a Yorkshire English admonition to overly familiar children"
- 2 To use the word thou. intransitive
"The hardcore role-players will wake up one day feeling, like a dead weight on their chest, the strain of endless texting in Renaissance Faire English—yet dutifully go on theeing and thouing all the same."
- 1 Misspelling of though. alt-of, misspelling, not-comparable
- 1 Nominative singular of ye (“you”). archaic, dialectal, form-of, literary, nominative, singular
"[...] Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall giue thee light."
- 2 Honorific alternative letter-case form of thou, sometimes used when referring to God or another important figure who is understood from context. alt-of, honorific
- 1 Misspelling of though. alt-of, misspelling
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Search not the wound too deep lest thou make a new one."
Etymology
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”). cognates and usage evolution The English word is cognate with Saterland Frisian du (“thou”), West Frisian do (“thou”), dialectal Dutch du, dou, douw (“thou”), Limburgish doe (“thou”), Low German du (“thou”), German du (“thou”), Danish du (“thou”), Swedish du (“thou”), Norwegian Nynorsk du (“thou”), Faroese tú (“thou”), Icelandic þú (“thou”), Gothic 𐌸𐌿 (þu, “thou”), Latin tu, Ancient Greek σύ (sú) (Doric Ancient Greek τύ (tú), Greek εσύ (esý)), Irish tu, Lithuanian tu, Old Church Slavonic тꙑ (ty), Welsh ti, Armenian դու (du), Albanian ti, Persian تو (to). The informality of thou and its replacement by ye in formal situations date only to the 14th century and come from French influence, since French (as many European languages, but not Old English) uses the second-person plural (vous) instead of the second-person singular (tu) as a mark of politeness or respect.
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.
Clipping of thou(sandth).
Clipping of thou(sand).
See though.
Related phrases
More for "thou"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.