The word
thou is a
second person singular pronoun in
English. It is now largely
archaic, having been replaced in almost all contexts by
you. It is used in parts of Northern
England and by
Scots .
Thou is the
nominative form; the
oblique/
objective form is
thee (functioning as both
accusative and
dative), and the
possessive is
thy or
thine. When
thou is the
grammatical subject of a
finite verb in the
indicative mood, the verb form typically ends in
-st, most often with the ending
-(e)st (e.g., "thou goest"; "thou dost"), but in some cases just
-t (e.g., "thou art"; "thou shalt"), although in some dialects of Old English (mainly in the North), this verb form ended in -s, hence the
Quaker habit of using what looks like the third person form of the verb with "thee" as the subject (paralleling the usage of "you"). In
Middle English,
thou was sometimes abbreviated by putting a small "u" over the letter
thorn: .