thou.
To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity.
Meaning & usage
To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity.
Don’t thou them as thous thee! – a Yorkshire English admonition to overly familiar children
To use the word thou.
Where this word comes from
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.
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.
Where this word comes from
Clipping of thou(sandth).
A thousand, especially a thousand of some currency (dollars, pounds sterling, etc.).
Whoa there, big spender — that'll cost you a few thou. Are you sure you can afford it?
Where this word comes from
Clipping of thou(sand).
Nominative singular of ye (“you”).
Where this word comes from
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”), dialectal German dau (“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 tú, Lithuanian tu, Old Church Slavonic тꙑ (ty), Welsh ti, Armenian դու (du), Albanian ti, Persian تو (to), Gujarati તું (tũ), Hindi तू (tū). 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.
Misspelling of though.
Where this word comes from
See though.
Misspelling of though.
Where this word comes from
See though.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.