# thou

Pronunciation: say "THOW" /ðaʊ/

## Noun

Pronunciation: say "THOW" /θaʊ/

2. A thousand, especially a thousand dollars, pounds or other units of currency. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A thousand, often a thousand dollars or pounds.
   - _He paid forty thou for the truck and regretted it within a month._
   - _The kitchen remodel came in about ten thou over budget._
3. A unit of length equal to one thousandth of an inch, or 25.4 micrometers.
   - Simple: A very small measure of length, one thousandth of an inch.
   - _The machinist trimmed two thou off the shaft so the bearing would slide on._
   - _The older fitters talked in thous, while the drawings were still marked in fractions of an inch._

## Verb

4. To speak to someone using thou instead of you, especially to show contempt or familiarity; also, simply to use the word thou.
   - Simple: To call someone thou instead of you, often to be rude or very friendly.
   - _Back when 'thou' was kept for servants, children and close friends, to thou a stranger was a real insult._
   - _In the dales, a farmer would thou his own children but never the vicar._

## Pronoun

1. Nominative singular of ye: the old form of you, used as the subject of a sentence when addressing one person. *(archaic)* — Nominative singular of ye (“you”).
   - Simple: Singular of ye: an old word for you, used as the subject when talking to one person.
   - _Kneeling at the altar, she whispered, "Thou knowest all my faults."_
   - _"Thou shalt not eat my leftovers," she wrote on a note for her brother._

## Origin

**Meaning 1** — Proto-Indo-European *túh₂ ("you, thou") passed into Proto-Germanic and Proto-West Germanic as *þū ("thou," singular "you"), then into Old English þū and Middle English thou. German, Danish and Swedish du, Icelandic þú, Latin tu, and Ancient Greek σύ are relatives. Treating thou as informal, with ye for formal use, began in Middle English under French influence, since French marks politeness or respect with its plural vous instead of the singular tu.
**Meaning 4** — From Late Middle English thouen (“to address a person with thou, particularly in a contemptuous or familiar manner”), from the pronoun thou.
**Meaning 3** — A clipping of thousandth.
**Meaning 2** — A clipping of thousand.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/thou (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).