þu

Forms

þū^[1] Late West Saxon accusative þē, genitive þīn, dative þē; dual ġit, plural ġē.^[2] Anglian texts and poetry have the accusative þeċ (Northumbrian also ðeh), beside þē.^[3][4] Unstressed, it must have had a variant with a short vowel.^[2] It is written þū or ðū, and can be joined to a preceding verb, as in westū and scealtū.^[5][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *þū (“thou”), from Proto-Indo-European *túh₂.^[1] It is the Indo-European pronoun of the second person singular, the same word as Gothic 𐌸𐌿 (þu), Old Norse þú, Old Frisian thū, Old Saxon thū, Old Dutch thū and Old High German dū.^[6][7] Outside Germanic, Orel lists Latin tū, Ancient Greek σύ (sú), Old Irish tú and Lithuanian tù among its relatives.^[8] Kroonen reconstructs the nominative as *tuH and suggests that its form may owe something to the plural Proto-Germanic *jūz.^[6] Köbler gives the variant Proto-Indo-European *tū̆ beside it.^[7]

Hogg and Fulk reconstruct the late Proto-Germanic singular as *þu, accusative *þek, genitive *þīnō, dative *þiz; unlike the first-person pronoun, the nominative and the oblique cases come from one stem.^[9] The accusative goes back to *twe, the nominative with an added *-e, which lost its /w/ in unstressed use and then took a final *-k as in the first person.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The pronoun is first recorded in the Vespasian Psalter, whose Old English gloss was added in the mid-ninth century.^[10][11] In Psalm 2 the gloss reads sunu min ðu earð ic to dege ic cende ðec “thou art my son, today I have begotten thee”, over Latin “filius meus es tu ego hodie genui te”, with the Anglian accusative ðec.^[11][3]

Semantic evolution

The pronoun is used on its own, reflexively in the dative or accusative (ne ondrǣd þū þē “do not fear”), and strengthened with self or āna “alone”.^[4] In glosses it renders Latin “tu”.^[7] In Beowulf the spelling þū occurs 43 times and ðū 19 times.^[5]

The word lived on as Middle English thou, the subject form used to someone of lower rank as well as to God or a lord, and is English thou.^[12][13]

Timeline

• s. ix med. – sunu min ðu earð “thou art my son” in the Vespasian Psalter gloss.^[10][11]
• 890×897 – Þu leofusta broður “thou dearest brother” in the Pastoral Care (Hatton 20).^[14][11]
• s. x/xi – þū and ðū over sixty times in the Beowulf manuscript.^[15][5]

Meanings

Pronoun

1. thou, you (one person): the pronoun of the second person singular.^[4][7]
2. in the dative and accusative, used reflexively: thyself.^[4]
3. with self or āna: thou thyself, thou alone.^[4]

Word family

• þīn

Descendants

• Middle English þou (→ English thou; English tha; English thow)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.29
3. ^ a b Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.32
4. ^ a b c d e f Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 1075
5. ^ a b c Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. þū
6. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 549
7. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. þū
8. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 428
9. ^ a b Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 5.30
10. ^ a b Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 329
11. ^ a b c d Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
12. ^ Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
13. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 499
15. ^ Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 344