thou
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "thou", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "thou" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "thou" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
thou is aEnglishpron. It means: Nominative singular of ye (“you”). Pronounced /ðaʊ/. It ranks #5,558 in English word frequency. Often confused with to and Tu.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | thou |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Pron |
| IPA | /ðaʊ/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #5,558 |
| Misspellings tracked | 5 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for thou is 4 letters long, classified as apron, 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 Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 5 documented wrong-spelling variants for thou, with forms such as "htou", "thhou", and "thuo". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.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 … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is thou, spelled T-H-O-U, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
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
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for thou
Misspelling Variants of "thou"
Frequency rank: #5,558 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter T in our English index: