thou
/ðaʊ/
"thou" is a 4-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“thou” has 5 generated spelling variants in the English index at frequency #5,558. The variants make it a useful spelling check.
- #5,558
- frequency rank, English
- 3,151
- “T” headwords
- 5
- tracked misspellings
- 20
- confusable pairs
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Nominative singular of ye (“you”).
Corpus desk
Index EN-thou · thou · English
thou · rank #5,558 · 5 variants · 20 confusables
- FREQ-COMMON #5,558
- LEN-MID 4 letters
- VOW-2 2 vowels
- CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
- VAR-MID 5 variants
- BOOK-MID 3,151
- PHOTO-FINISH teens
Nearest frequency peer: teens (-1 rank slots)
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
Rank peers near misspelling magnet “thou”
Same rarity band: useful when a typo lands on a peer headword
- strictly
strictly
94,446 corpus weight
- sunshine
sunshine
94,445 corpus weight
- teens
teens
94,444 corpus weight
- thou
thou
94,443 corpus weight
- tier
tier
94,442 corpus weight
- Tommy
Tommy
94,441 corpus weight
What this shows “thou” sits among these FrequencyWords peers; misspelling depth is tracked separately in the edit-distance chart.
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) |
Frequency seat of misspelling magnet “thou”
A misspelling magnet
The generator records 5 spelling variants around thou (IPA /ðaʊ/), apronoun. Corpus frequency is #5,558 among 3,151 “T” headwords. Dominant gloss: "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”).
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how thou appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
[...] Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall giue thee light.
Art thou in earnest about thy soul? and canst thou tell the Searcher of Hearts, Thou, O God, art the thing that I long for? Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I would love thee?
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
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Similar English words by spelling shape
Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "thou", not the corpus desk frequency band.
Same letter count
Frequency-ranked English headwords with 4 letters (nearest by frequency rank).
Similar misspelling depth
Headwords with a similar count of attested misspellings (5 here; floor ≥5).