Thou Art Lost and Gone Forever
We need to step aside for a moment from the march of English and American history to observe a rare development that allowed “guys” not just to survive but to establish itself in the heart of the English language. That development culminated in the 18th century just as “guy” was beginning to flex its muscles and broaden its range of meanings. What was it? It was the loss of an essential element of the language we use every day: the personal pronoun “thou.”
Whether or not we study the grammar of English, the personal pronouns don’t care. We use them all the time in any case. As the name “pronoun” implies, they take the place of nouns, and of phrases centered on nouns, so that we don’t have to endlessly repeat those nouns.
If there were no pronouns, Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to say at Gettysburg:
The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Instead, using only pronoun-free language, he would have had to say something like this:
The world will little note, nor long remember what the living persons at this ceremony say here, but it can never forget what those who gave their lives on this battlefield did here. It is for the living persons at this ceremony, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which the persons who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
Occasionally people deliberately choose to refer to themselves by name rather than by pronoun, as Richard Nixon did in 1962 after losing the election for governor of California:
You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
But even that statement still has two pronouns, “you” and “my.” In a truly pronoun-free environment, the future president would have had to say:
The media don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is Richard M. Nixon’s last press conference.
So what happened that allowed “guys” or “you guys” to be a personal pronoun, and an essential one too? It was a once-in-a-millennium moment that was improbably available at just the right time. One pronoun dropped out, to be replaced by another, which in turn made way for “guys” big time.
The dropout was “thou.” Its loss is lamented—inadvertently—in the chorus of a familiar 19th-century song:
O my darling,
O my darling,
O my darling Clementine,
Thou art lost and gone forever,
Dreadful sorry, Clementine.
It’s a dreadful tale, though it sometimes seems to be tongue in cheek. It is a well-known song of California gold rush times, a purportedly sad folk ballad that draws laughs for its inept diction, clumsy rhymes, and trifling sentiments (“her shoes were number nine,” “herring boxes without topses,” “then I kissed her little sister and forgot my Clementine”).
It was written around 1864 and published in 1885. And over the years since, not only Clementine was lost but “thou art.” Modern versions generally substitute “you are,” because “thou” continues to grow ever more obsolete.
A pronoun is so fundamental to a language that it rarely gets lost. And even more rarely does it get lost without a replacement, as “thou” did.
Personal pronouns come in different forms for different grammatical uses. “Thou” is used as the subject of a sentence, as in “Clementine,” along with its derivatives “thee,” as in “I give thee my word,” and the possessives “thy” and “thine,” as in “Go wash thy face and thine ears.” They are all different forms of the now obsolete second-person singular pronoun.
| English Personal Pronouns: Old English (1000 years ago) (modern spellings used for all periods) | |
| Singular | Plural |
| Singular—1st person I, me, mine | Plural—1st person we, our, ours |
| Singular—2nd person thou, thee, thine | Plural—2nd person you, your, yours |
| Singular—3rd person he, him, his she, her, hers it, its | Plural—3rd person they, them, theirs |
| English Personal Pronouns: Middle English (500 years ago) (modern spellings used for all periods) | |
| Singular | Plural |
| Singular—1st person I, me, mine | Plural—1st person we, our, ours |
| Singular—2nd person thou, thee, thine you, your, yours | Plural—2nd person you, your, yours |
| Singular—3rd person he, him, his she, her, hers it, its | Plural—3rd person they, them, theirs |
| English Personal Pronouns: 18th Century (modern spellings used for all periods) | |
| Singular | Plural |
| Singular—1st person I, me, mine | Plural—1st person we, our, ours |
| Singular—2nd person you, your, yours | Plural – 2nd person you, your, yours |
| Singular—3rd person he, him, his she, her, hers it, its | Plural—3rd person they, them, theirs |
| English Personal Pronouns: Today (21st Century) (modern spellings used for all periods) | |
| Singular | Plural |
| Singular—1st person I, me, mine | Plural—1st person we, our, ours |
| Singular—2nd person you, your, yours y’all | Plural—2nd person guys, you guys, your guys’, you guys’; y’all, all y’all, etc. |
| Singular—3rd person he, him, his she, her, hers it, its | Plural—3rd person they, them, theirs |
Losing pronouns seems careless. Pronouns are not like nouns and verbs, adjectives and adverbs, which our language is full of (half a million or more of them). But we have just a handful of pronouns, and they have the important job of connecting what we say to the people and things in the world around us: We like it, They admire her, I enjoy him, and so on.
They are called personal pronouns, because they refer to people. Or persons, if you will. We refer to ourselves with first-person pronouns: I, me, my, mine, in the singular (just one of us); we, us, our, ours in the plural (more than one). Those are called first person because they refer to the first person in anything we say or write; not necessarily the leader or most powerful person, just the one who is doing the speaking or writing .
Third-person pronouns refer to others who aren’t directly involved in the conversation: he, she, it, his, her, hers, its, in the singular (just one); they, them, their, theirs, in the plural (more than one).
And then there is our particular concern, the second-person pronouns. That’s someone I’m speaking to or directly addressing in writing. With “thou” disappearing, “you” stretched from the plural to cover the singular too, with forms you, your, yours. The only problem is, under that arrangement you can’t tell singular from plural, which personal pronouns need to do.
As long as “thou” was available, English had no such problem. In Old English times, a thousand years ago, English had the ancestors of “thou” and “you” for second-person singular pronouns. “Art thou Beowulf?” they could ask, and “Where are ye from?” Simple and uncomplicated enough.
In what we call the Middle English period, from about 1100 to 1500 C.E., the English language added a complication that would eventually lead to the 18th-century disappearance of “thou.” In common with other major European languages, including French, Italian, and Spanish, English speakers began addressing their superiors and even their equals as “you,” rather than “thou,” or some other plural pronoun, even when they were speaking to only one person. In English, “thou” did continue for centuries to be used when talking with servants and others of lower class, as well as in intimate relations like those of families or lovers.
Take, for example, the modern compliment (or attempt at compliment) addressed to one person:
You are very beautiful.
Now, still speaking to that one person, make it singular or plural, depending on who we’re speaking to:
Thou art very beautiful. (speaking to a servant)
You are very beautiful (speaking to the Queen at a reception)
We find the new choice for second-person singular, for example, in the medieval Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written just before 1400. In the opening scene, King Arthur and his knights and ladies are enjoying their Christmas feast when a strange man on horseback gallops right into the hall, wielding an axe, his horse and axe and himself entirely green. The knights and ladies stare in silent amazement. After a long silence Arthur speaks up:
Alight down and stay, I pray thee,
And whatever thy will is, we shall know later.
Arthur as king is highest ranking in the room and would address everyone there as “thou.” Instead of showing deference to Arthur’s status, however, the green knight replies,
But for the fame of thee, sir, is lifted up so high,
And thy town and thy knights are the best . . .
And so it goes for the rest of the story, Gawain and the green knight “thou”ing each other, while the court always addresses the king respectfully with “you.”
That is just one of many Middle English examples. The older use of singular pronouns continued in the English Renaissance, and of course it shows up in Shakespeare.
In the first scene of Julius Caesar, for example, we find the tribune Marullus talking with commoners. Marullus begins with “you,” but when he recognizes the lower rank of the person he addresses, he quickly switches to “thou.” The commoner, of course, still respectfully says “you” in reply.
marullus. You, sir, what trade are you?
second commoner. Truly, sir, in respect of a fine workman, I am but, as you would say, a cobbler.
marullus. But what trade art thou? Answer me directly.
second commoner. A trade, sir, that, I hope, I may use with a safe conscience; which is, indeed, sir, a mender of bad soles.
marullus. What trade, thou knave? Thou naughty knave, what trade?
second commoner. Nay, I beseech you, sir, be not out with me: yet, if you be out, sir, I can mend you.
marullus. What meanest thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!
Likewise in Richard III, we find clueless Lord Hastings respectfully addressed as “you” by the Duke of Buckingham, who uses “thou” in an aside to let the audience know what he really thinks.
hastings. ’Tis like enough for I stay dinner there.
buckingham (aside). And supper too, although thou know’st it not.
(aloud) Come, will you go?
Legal documents from that time also show that people were putting thee and thou to use as insults. The attorney general at Sir Walter Raleigh’s trial taunted Raleigh by saying “All that he did was at thy instigation, thou viper; for I thou thee, thou traitor.”
But by his time “thou” was fading. Why it did nobody knows for sure, but there is no question that already even in the 16th century more and more people avoided “thou.”
In other European languages, the plain forms of address equivalent to “thou” remain to this day, along with the polite plural alternatives equivalent to “you” or “they.” In English, the polite form totally vanquished the plain one, except in archaic remnants. Perhaps there was more of a democratic spirit among English speakers, thinking everyone deserves respect, even the lowliest of servants. Perhaps more likely, it was by no means easy to determine at once whether a stranger you met was of equal or higher or lower status. The safest choice, in that case, would be “you.” That would always imply respect, rather than “thou,” which could well have been an insult.
In any case, as “thou” receded, it rapidly became more and more of an insult to use “thou” instead of “you,” because now instead of routinely saying “thou” to someone of lower class, there was always the polite alternative “you.”
As the change was spreading rapidly in the 17th century, the new religious sect known as the Quakers were moving in the opposite direction. Pointedly avoiding the polite “you” as too deferential, they insisted on the use of plain “thou” for all occasions, considering all people equal and not to be deferred to. They eliminated “thou,” though, using “thee” alone. At about the same time, in the rest of the English language, “ye” was vanishing and “you” took its place in Quaker talk.
George Fox, founder of the Quakers, once said, “We were often beset and abused, and sometimes in danger of our lives for using these words to some proud men, who would say, ‘What! You ill-bred clown, do you thou me?’ ”
As that statement indicates, the Quakers were far from admired for their insistence on “thou.” It may be that reaction to the Quakers led to the final demise of “thou” from present-day discourse.
This doesn’t mean “thou” was completely gone. “Thou” persisted in religious tradition that was loath to change familiar words. The King James Bible of the early 17th century followed the pronoun conventions of its predecessor, the Tyndale version, maintaining the older, simpler Old English distinction of “thou” addressing one person or divine figure, “you” for many. And since the King James Bible is so admired for its language, it has helped keep “thou” in print even to the present day.
Another American exception is patriotic songs, at least those written in the United States in the 19th century, like Samuel Francis Smith’s 1831 “America,” which begins:
My country, ’tis of thee,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills,
Like that above.
Likewise in “America the Beautiful,” written in 1893 by Katherine Lee Bates, inspired by a view of Pikes Peak:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness.
America! America!
God mend thine ev’ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.
Other songs, however, don’t attempt old-fashioned “thou”s. “The Star-Spangled Banner” (1814), for example, begins “O say, can ‘you’ see.”
All this is to explain a very unusual situation: how it became possible for “guy,” referring at first to a certain kind of man, then to any kind of man, and eventually even to include women, to become our present-day second-person plural pronoun. The space was vacant, and no word or phrase was successful at filling it in the 18th century or indeed the 19th. So the space remained open until “you guys” came along in the 20th century.