Ye (pronoun)

Ye (IPA: /jiː/) is a second-person, plural, personal pronoun (nominative), spelled in Old English as "ge". In Middle English and Early Modern English, it was used to address an equal or superior person. While its use is archaic in most of the English-speaking world, it is used in Newfoundland, Northern England, Cornwall, and Ireland to distinguish from the singular "you".

"Ye" is also sometimes used to represent an Early Modern English form of the word "the" (traditionally pronounced /ðiː/), such as in "Ye Olde Shoppe". In this transcription the letter which resembles a 'Y' is actually a thorn (þ), the predecessor to the modern digraph "th". The word "The" was thus written Þe, never as ye. Medieval printing presses did not contain the letter thorn, so the letter y was substituted owing to its similarity with some medieval scripts, especially later ones. This orthography has sometimes led speakers of Modern English to pronounce "ye" as /ji:/.

Etymology