thee

See also: Thee, thée, and the'e

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English þe, from Old English þē (“thee”, originally dative, but later also accusative), from Proto-Germanic *þiz (“thee”), from Proto-Indo-European *te (“second-person singular pronoun”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian die (“thee”), West Frisian dy (“thee”), German Low German di (“thee”), German dir (“thee”, dative pron.), Icelandic þér (“thee”). More at thou.

Pronunciation

• enPR: thē, IPA^(key): /ðiː/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -iː
• Homophone: the (when stressed)

Pronoun

thee (second-person singular, objective case, nominative thou, reflexive thyself)

1. (now chiefly archaic, literary) Objective and reflexive case of thou. [from 8th c.]
   • 1598, William Shakespeare, Henry IV part 1, page 1.2.49-50:

     Prince Henry: Did I ever call for thee to pay thy part?
     Falstaff: No; I'll give thee thy due, thou hast paid all there.

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost:

     Michael, this my behest have thou in charge,
     Take to thee from among the Cherubim
     Thy choice of flaming Warriours, least the Fiend

   • 1742, Charles Wesley (music), “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown”:

     Come, O thou Traveller unknown, / Whom still I hold, but cannot see! / My company before is gone, / And I am left alone with Thee; / With Thee all night I mean to stay, / And wrestle till the break of day.

2. (now chiefly archaic, dialect) Thou. [from 12th c.]
   • 1773, Frances Burney, Journals & Letters, Penguin 2001:

     [H]e immediately perceived when I was taken ill, and, after seeing Mama, said to me "I am afraid Thee art not well thyself?"

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “The Ship”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 84:

     "He says he's our man, Bildad," said Peleg, "he wants to ship."
     "Dost thee?" said Bildad, in a hollow tone

   • 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin:

     "What does thee want, father?" said Rachel.

Alternative forms

• Thee

Derived terms

• get thee behind me

Translations

Objective case of 'thou'

• Arabic: ـكَ‎ (ar) m sg (-ka), ـكِ‎ (ar) f sg (-ki), إِيَّاكَ‎ m sg (ʔiyyāka), إِيَّاكِ‎ f sg (ʔiyyāki)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 你 (zh) (nǐ), 汝 (zh) (rǔ), 尔 (zh) (ěr)

• Czech: tě (cs), tebe (cs), ti (cs), tobě, tebou
• Danish: dig (da)
• French: (informal and addressing one person; used after a preposition) toi (fr), (informal and addressing one person; used before a verb) te (fr)
• German: dich (de), dir (de)
• Hungarian: téged (hu)
• Irish: thú
• Italian: (informal and addressing one person; used after a preposition) te (it), (informal and addressing one person; used before a verb) ti (it)
• Norwegian: deg (no)
• Polish: cię (pl)
• Portuguese: tu (pt), ti (pt)
• Russian: тебя́ (ru) (tebjá) (genitive, accusative), тебе́ (ru) (tebé) (dative, prepositional), тобо́й (ru) (tobój) (instrumental)
• Slovak: ťa, teba, ti, tebe, tebou
• Spanish: te (es), ti (es)
• Swedish: dig (sv)
• Ukrainian: тебе́ (tebé), тобі́ (tobí)

thou — see thou

Verb

thee (third-person singular simple present thees, present participle theeing, simple past and past participle theed)

1. (transitive) To address (a person) using the pronoun thee.

   Synonym: thou

   • 1677, William Gibson, “An Answer to John Cheyney’s Pamphlet Entituled The Shibboleth of Quakerism”, in The Life of God, which is the Light and Salvation of Men, Exalted: […], [London: s.n.], →OCLC, page 134:

     What! doſt thou not believe that God's Thouing and theeing was and is ſound Speech? [...] And theeing & Thouing of one ſingle Perſon was the language of Chriſt Jeſus, and the Holy Prophets and Apoſtles both under the Diſpenſations of Law and Goſpel, [...]

2. (intransitive) To use the word thee.

   Synonym: thou

   • 2006, Julian Dibbell, chapter 5, in Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, →ISBN:

     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.

   • 2009, David R. Keeston [pseudonym; Alan D. Jenkins], “Seeing God in the Ordinary”, in The Hitch Hikers’ Guide to the Gospel, [Morrisville, N.C.]: Lulu.com, →ISBN, page 39:

     You want to hear the word of God, and be challenged to go out and change the world. Instead, you are, for the fifth Sunday in a row, mewling on about purple-headed mountains (which is a bit of an imaginative stretch, since you live in East Anglia) and "theeing" and "thouing" all over the place.

See also

English personal pronouns

Dialectal and obsolete or archaic forms are in italics.

			personal pronoun			possessive pronoun	possessive determiner
			subjective	objective	reflexive
first person	singular		I me (colloquial)	me	myself me mysen	mine	my mine (before vowels, archaic) me
	plural		we	us	ourselves ourself oursen	ours	our
second person	singular	standard, formal	you	you	yourself yoursen	yours yourn (obsolete outside dialects)	your
		archaic, informal	thou	thee	thyself theeself thysen	thine	thy thine (before vowels)
	plural	standard	you ye (archaic)	you	yourselves	yours yourn (obsolete outside dialects)	your
		colloquial	you all y'all you guys	you all y'all you guys	y'allselves	y'all's you guys's your guys's (proscribed)	y'all's your all's (nonstandard) you guys's your guys's (proscribed)
		informal / dialectal	(see list of dialectal forms at you and inflected forms in those entries)
third person	singular	masculine	he	him	himself hisself (archaic) hissen	his hisn (obsolete outside dialects)	his
		feminine	she	her	herself hersen	hers hern (obsolete outside dialects)	her
		neuter	it hit	it hit	itself hitself	its his (archaic)	its his (archaic) hits
		genderless	they	them	themself, themselves	theirs	their
		genderless, nonspecific (formal)	one	one	oneself	–	one's
	plural		they	them hem, 'em	themselves theirsen	theirs theirn (obsolete outside dialects)	their

Etymology 2

From Middle English theen (“to increase, prosper, flourish”), from Old English þēon (“to thrive, prosper, flourish, grow”), from Proto-Germanic *þinhaną (“to thrive, succeed”), from Proto-Indo-European *tenk- (“to succeed, turn out well”). Cognate with Dutch gedijen (“to flourish, thrive, prosper, succeed”), German gedeihen (“to thrive”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌸𐌴𐌹𐌷𐌰𐌽 (gaþeihan, “to increase, thrive”).

Alternative forms

• the (Scotland)

Pronunciation

• enPR: thē, IPA^(key): /θiː/
• Rhymes: -iː

Verb

thee (third-person singular simple present thees, present participle theeing, simple past and past participle theed)

1. (intransitive, UK, obsolete) To thrive; prosper.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 33:

     Well mote thee, as well can wish your thought.

Derived terms

• theedom

Etymology 3

From Pitman zee, which it is related to phonetically and graphically, and the sound it represents.

Noun

thee (plural thees)

1. The letter ⟨(⟩, which stands for the th sound /ð/ in Pitman shorthand.

Related terms

• ith
• eth, the name of the IPA letter for this sound

Etymology 4

Respelling of the popularized by Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth.

Article

thee

1. (very rare, nonstandard) Alternative spelling of the

Anagrams

• ethe

Acehnese

Etymology

From Proto-Chamic *thɔw, from Proto-Malayo-Chamic, from Proto-Malayo-Sumbawan, from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *taqu, from Proto-Austronesian *Caqu.

Verb

thee

1. to be informed

Dutch

Etymology

From Hokkien 茶 (tê). The "-h-" is a faux-Greek spelling (compare Greek τσάι (tsái)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /teː/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: thee
• Rhymes: -eː

Noun

thee m (plural theeën, diminutive theetje n)

Gevuld theeglas
Filled tea glass

1. tea

Derived terms

• ijsthee
• kamillethee
• kruidenthee
• muntthee
• rooibosthee
• theedoos
• theedrinker
• theeglas
• theekop
• theekrans
• theelepel
• theeleut
• theemuts
• theepauze
• theeplant
• theepot
• theeroos
• theezakje

Descendants

• Afrikaans: tee
• Berbice Creole Dutch: tei
• Negerhollands: thee, tee
• → Caribbean Javanese: teh
• → Dutch Low Saxon: thee
• → Danish: te
  • → Faroese: te
• → English: tea
  • Gullah: tea
  • Jamaican Creole: tea
  • → Abenaki: ti
  • → Chickasaw: tii'
  • → Cocopa: ṭi·
  • → Cornish: té
  • → Cree:

    Canadian syllabics script: ᑎᕀ (tiy)

    Latin script: tiy

  • → Inuktitut: ᑏ (tii)
  • → Irish: tae
  • → Maori: tī
  • → Malecite-Passamaquoddy: ti
  • → Mikasuki: ti'g'tlo'q, ji'gitlo'q (“kettle”) (from "tea kettle")
  • → Panamint: tii
  • → Telugu: టీ (ṭī)
  • → Unami: ti
  • → Welsh: te
• → French: thé
  • Haitian Creole: te
  • Louisiana Creole: thé
  • → Armenian: թեյ (tʿey)
  • → Coeur d'Alene: liiti
  • → Corsican: tè
  • → Greek: τέϊον (téïon) (with neuter suffix -ion)
  • → Italian: tè, té
    • → Romansch: te, té, tè
  • → Norman: thée
  • → Occitan: tè
  • → Romansch: te, té, tè
  • → South Slavey: lidí
  • → Tiri: tee
  • → Walloon: té
• → Galibi Carib: te
• → German: Tee
  • → German Low German: Tee
    • Plautdietsch: Tee
  • → Estonian: tee
  • → Hunsrik: Tee
  • → Lower Sorbian: tej
  • → Romansch: te, té, tè
  • → Saterland Frisian: Tee
  • → Silesian: tyj
    • → Slovene: (dialectal) te
  • → Silesian German: Tee
  • → Vilamovian: tyy
  • → Zipser German: Tee
• → Icelandic: te
• → New Latin: thea
  • ⇒ Latin: herba thea (“herb tea”)
    • → Polish: herbata
      • → Belarusian: гарба́та (harbáta)
      • → Kashubian: arbata, rabata, erbata, rebata
      • → Lithuanian: arbata
      • → Samogitian: erbeta
      • → Ukrainian: герба́та (herbáta)
• → Latvian: tēja
• → Norwegian: te
• → Sranan Tongo: te
  • → Aukan: te
  • → Saramaccan: té
• → Swedish: te, the, thé
  • → Finnish: tee
• → West Frisian: tee

Anagrams

• heet, hete

Middle English

Etymology 1

Pronoun

thee

1. Alternative form of þe (“thee”)

Etymology 2

Verb

thee

1. Alternative form of theen

Old Irish

Adjective

thee

1. Alternative spelling of thé: lenited form of tee (“hot”).

Scots

Etymology 1

From Old English þēoh, from Proto-Germanic *þeuhą, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *tewk-.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /θi/

Noun

thee (plural thees)

1. thigh

Etymology 2

From Middle English theen, from Old English þēon, from Proto-Germanic *þinhaną.

Verb

thee (third-person singular simple present thees, present participle theein, simple past theet, past participle theet)

1. (archaic, literary) To thrive, prosper

Etymology 3

From Middle English þe, from Old English þē (“thee”, originally dative, but later also accusative), from Proto-Germanic *þiz (“thee”), from Proto-Indo-European *te (“second-person singular pronoun”).

Alternative forms

• dee

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ði/
• (Orkney, Shetland) IPA^(key): /di/

Pronoun

thee (subjective case thou, reflexive thysel, possessive determiner thy)

1. (archaic outside Orkney and Shetland) thee, you (2nd person singular object pronoun, informal)
2. (Orkney, Shetland) thou, you (2nd person singular subject pronoun, informal)

Usage notes

• Regularly used throughout Scotland up until the middle of the 1800s; now only used as an archaism outside Shetland and Orkney.

References

• “thou, pers. pron, v.” in the Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries.

Yola

Etymology 1

From Middle English þe, from Old English þē.

Pronoun

thee

1. thee
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Fho told thee?

     Who told thee?

Etymology 2

From Middle English þi, apocopated variant of þin, from Old English þīn, from Proto-West Germanic *þīn.

Alternative forms

• th'

Determiner

thee

1. thy
   • 1867, GLOSSARY OF THE DIALECT OF FORTH AND BARGY:

     Coome to thee met; Coome thee wyse.

     Come to thy meat; Come thy ways.

Derived terms

• o'thie

References

• Jacob Poole (1867), William Barnes, editor, A Glossary, With some Pieces of Verse, of the old Dialect of the English Colony in the Baronies of Forth and Bargy, County of Wexford, Ireland, London: J. Russell Smith, page 40 & 31