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Ye

 - 10 dictionary results

ye

1  [yee] ,
Use Ye in a Sentence
–pronoun
1. Archaic (except in some elevated or ecclesiastical prose), Literary, or British Dialect.
a. (used nominatively as the plural of thou, esp. in rhetorical, didactic, or poetic contexts, in addressing a group of persons or things): O ye of little faith; ye brooks and hills.
b. (used nominatively for the second person singular, esp. in polite address): Do ye not know me?
c. (used objectively in the second person singular or plural): I have something to tell ye. Arise, the enemy is upon ye!
2. (used with mock seriousness in an invocation, mild oath, or the like): Ye gods and little fishes!
Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE gē; c. D gij, G ihr, ON ēr, Goth jus

ye

2  [thee; spelling pron. yee]
–definite article Archaic.
the 1 .
Usage note:
The word ye2, as in Ye Olde Booke Shoppe, is simply an archaic spelling of the definite article the. The use of the letter Y was a printer's adaptation of the thorn, þ, the character in the Old English alphabet representing the th- sounds (th) and (th̸) in Modern English; Y was the closest symbol in the Roman alphabet. Originally, the form would have been rendered as or ye. The pronunciation [yee] today is a spelling pronunciation.

thou

1  [thou] ,pronoun, singular, nominative thou; possessive thy or thine; objective thee; plural, nominative you or ye; possessive your or yours; objective you or ye; verb
–pronoun
1. Archaic (except in some elevated or ecclesiastical prose). the personal pronoun of the second person singular in the nominative case (used to denote the person or thing addressed): Thou shalt not kill.
2. (used by the Friends) a familiar form of address of the second person singular.
–verb (used with object)
3. to address as “thou.”
–verb (used without object)
4. to use “thou” in discourse.
Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE thū; c. G, MD du, ON thū, Goth thu, OIr tú, Welsh, Cornish ti, L tū, Doric Gk tý, Lith tù, OCS ty; akin to Skt tvam; (v.) late ME thowen, deriv. of the pronoun
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To Ye
ye 1   (thē, yē)   
def.art.   Archaic
The.

[Misreading of ye, from Middle English þe, spelling of the, the (using the letter thorn).]
Usage Note: In an attempt to seem quaint or old-fashioned, many store signs such as "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe" use spellings that are no longer current. The word ye in such signs looks identical to the archaic second plural pronoun ye, but it is in fact not the same word. Ye in "Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe" is just an older spelling of the definite article the. The y in this ye was never pronounced (y) but was rather the result of improvisation by early printers. In Old English and early Middle English, the sound (th) was represented by the letter thorn (þ). When printing presses were first set up in England in the 1470s, the type and the typesetters all came from Continental Europe, where this letter was not in use. The letter y was used instead because in the handwriting of the day the thorn was very similar to y. Thus we see such spellings as ye for the,yt or yat for that, and so on well into the 19th century. However, the modern revival of the archaic spelling of the has not been accompanied by a revival of the knowledge of how it was pronounced, with the result that (yē) is the usual pronunciation today.
ye 2   (yē)   
pron.  

  1. (used with a pl. verb) Archaic You.

  2. (used with a sing. verb) Archaic You.


[Middle English, from Old English gē; see yu- in Indo-European roots.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Slang Dictionary
thou [θɑʊ]

  1. n.
    one thousand. : I managed to get a couple of thou from the bank, but I need a little more than that.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Word Origin & History

ye  (pron.)
O.E. ge, nom. pl. of 2nd pers. pronoun þu (see thou); cognate with O.Fris. ji, O.S. gi, M.Du. ghi, Du. gij. Altered, by influence of we, from an earlier form that was similar to Goth. jus "you (pl.)" (see you). Cognate with Lith. jus, Skt. yuyam, Avestan yuzem, Gk. hymeis. The -r- in O.N. er, Ger. ihr probably is from infl. of the 1st pers. pl. pronouns (O.N. ver, Ger. wir).

ye  (article)
old or quaintly archaic way of writing the, in which the -y- is a 16c. graphic alteration of þ, an O.E. character (generally called "thorn," originally a Gmc. rune; see th-) that represented the "hard" -th- sound at the beginning of the. Early printers, whose types were founded on the continent, did not have a þ, so they substituted y as the letter that looked most like it. But in such usages it was not pronounced "y." Ye for the (and yt for that) continued in manuscripts through 18c. Revived 19c. as a deliberate antiquarianism; the Ye Olde _____ construction was being mocked by 1896.

thou 
2nd nominative singular personal pronoun, O.E. þu, from P.Gmc. *thu (cf. O.Fris. thu, M.Du., M.L.G. du, O.H.G., Ger. du, O.N. þu, Goth. þu), from PIE *tu-, second person singular pronoun (cf. L. tu, Ir. tu, Welsh ti, Gk. su, Lith. tu, O.C.S. ty, Skt. twa-m). Superseded in M.E. by plural form you (from a different root), but retained in certain dialects (e.g. Philadelphia Quakers). The plural at first was used in addressing superior individuals, later also (to err on the side of propriety) strangers, and ultimately all equals. By c.1450 the use of thou to address inferiors gave it a tinge of insult unless addressed by parents to children, or intimates to one another. Hence the verb meaning "to use 'thou' to a person" (c.1440).
"Avaunt, caitiff, dost thou thou me! I am come of good kin, I tell thee!"["Hickscorner," c.1530]
A brief history of the second person pronoun in Eng. can be found here.
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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Computing Dictionary

ye networking
The country code for Yemen.
(1999-01-27)

The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2007 Denis Howe
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