Thee
/ðiː/noun
An archaic or dialectal form of the second-person singular object pronoun.
Did you know?‘Thee’ descends from the same ancient Indo-European pronoun family as Latin tu, Greek sy, and Sanskrit tvam, showing that even everyday address once carried a deep grammatical distinction of power and intimacy.
Etymological Timeline
Proto-Indo-European
PIE
*tuH
“Second-person singular pronoun, roughly ‘thou/you’”
Proto-Germanic
PGmc
*þē
“Dative/object form of the second-person singular pronoun”
Old English
English
þē
“‘thee,’ the singular object form of ‘thou’”
Middle English
English
thee
“Singular object pronoun used in speech and writing”
Modern English
English
thee
“Archaic or dialectal singular object pronoun”