- published: 12 Jan 2015
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The word thou ( /ðaʊ/ in most dialects) is a second person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you. It is used in parts of Northern England and by Scots. Thou is the nominative form; the oblique/objective form is thee (functioning as both accusative and dative), and the possessive is thy or thine. Almost all verbs following thou have the endings -st or -est; e.g., "thou goest". In Middle English, thou was sometimes abbreviated by putting a small "u" over the letter thorn: þͧ.
Originally, thou was simply the singular counterpart to the plural pronoun ye, derived from an ancient Indo-European root. Following a process found in other Indo-European languages, thou was later used to express intimacy, familiarity or even disrespect, while another pronoun, you, the oblique/objective form of ye, was used for formal circumstances (see T–V distinction). In the 17th century, thou fell into disuse in the standard language but persisted, sometimes in altered form, in regional dialects of England and Scotland, as well as in the language of such religious groups as the Society of Friends. Early English translations of the Bible used thou and never you as the singular second-person pronoun, with the double effect of rescuing thou from complete obscurity and also imbuing it with an air of religious solemnity that is antithetical to its former sense of familiarity or disrespect. The use of the pronoun was also common in poetry.
Please calm down with all the violent rhetoric. Some
people who put on a badge are just trying to help people-
-just trying to do some good. My dad, mom, uncle, aunt,
brother, sister, son, daughter is a cop. I don't want to
hear another word about bribery. I don't want to hear
about racial profiling, broken bones, or prison rape--or
another unarmed kid filled from head to toe with fifty
government-issued bullets. There is a fundamental flaw in
your desire. There is a psychological deficiency in
policing others. Those who maintain a structure of unjust
laws, those who bow to the province of the few, those who
would coerce others under the implicit threat of violent
subjugation--your reign is at an end. When they attack in
the name of the law, we will retaliate in the name of
liberty.