thou
/ðaʊ/
"thou" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“thou” is a regularly-used English word, ranked #5,558 in English word frequency and used as a pronoun.
- #5,558
- frequency rank, English
- 4
- letters
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - Nominative singular of ye (“you”).
Visual similarity to commonly confused words
How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).
Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thou |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pronoun |
| IPA | /ðaʊ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,558 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “thou” sits in English frequency
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for thou is 4 letters long, classified as a pronoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ðaʊ/. Corpus data places it at rank #5,558 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text. The dominant gloss from Wiktionary reads: "Nominative singular of ye (“you”).".
Our generated misspelling index lists 5 likely wrong-spelling variants for thou, with forms such as "htou", "thhou", and "thuo". Every one of these variants traces to a single-character edit -- an added or dropped letter, a swapped consonant, or a vowel swap -- the kind of slip a spell-checker is built to catch. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "to", "Tu", "two", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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 … The correct English form is thou, spelled T-H-O-U.
Definition
- 1Nominative singular of ye (“you”).
Etymology
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”), 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 tu, Lithuanian tu, Old Church Slavonic тꙑ (ty), Welsh ti, Armenian դու (du), Albanian ti, Persian تو (to). 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.
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: htou,thhou,thuo,tohu,tthou
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of thou - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you spell "thou"?
What does "thou" mean?
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Using “thou”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is T-H-O-U - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Say it as /ðaʊ/ (IPA); tap the speaker on the pronunciation badge to hear it where audio exists.
- Don't mix it up with “to” - see the side-by-side comparison. thou vs to
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.