Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A thousand, especially of dollars.
  • pronoun Used to indicate the one being addressed, especially in a literary, liturgical, or devotional context.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To address as “thou”: implying (except when referring to the usage of the Friends) familiarity, wrath, scorn, contempt, etc.
  • To use thou, thee, thy, and thine in discourse, as do the Friends.
  • A personal pronoun of the second person, in the singular number, nominative case, the possessive case being thy or thine, and the objective thee: plural, ye or you, your, you. See thine and you.
  • In ordinary English use the place of thou has been taken by you, which is properly plural, and takes a plural verb. Thou is now little used except archaically, in poetry, provincially, in addressing the Deity, and by the Friends, who usually say not thou but thee, putting a verb in the third person singular with it: as, thee is or is thee?
  • Formerly it was used in general address, and often bore special significance, according to circumstances, as noting— equality, familiarity, or intimacy
  • superiority on the part of the speaker
  • contempt or scorn for the person addressed (see thou, v.).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To address as thou, esp. to do so in order to treat with insolent familiarity or contempt.
  • intransitive verb rare To use the words thou and thee in discourse after the manner of the Friends.
  • pronoun The second personal pronoun, in the singular number, denoting the person addressed; thyself; the pronoun which is used in addressing persons in the solemn or poetical style.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A unit of length equal to one-thousandth of an inch.
  • pronoun archaic, literary you singular informal, nominative case
  • verb transitive To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of familiarity or contempt.
  • verb intransitive To use the word thou.
  • noun slang A thousand, especially a thousand dollars, a thousand pounds sterling, etc.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English thū, second person nominative sing. personal pron.; see tu- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortened from thousandth.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English thou, thow, thu, þou, from Old English þū, from Proto-Germanic *þū, from Proto-Indo-European *túh₂. Akin to Old Frisian thū (West Frisian do), Old Saxon thū (Low German du), Old Dutch thū (Middle Dutch du, Limburgish doe), Old High German (German du), Old Norse þú, (Icelandic þú, Danish du, Norwegian du, Swedish du), Latin tu, Ancient Greek σύ (sý) (Modern Greek εσύ (esý)).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortened from thousand.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Thou, WeirdNet, art thinking of thousand.

    June 16, 2008

  • Wherefore art 1000, Romeo?

    June 16, 2008

  • Well, I've definitely said, "5 thou" to refer to thousand. Add that to the fact WordNet only contains content words, nouns, verbs, etc., and this makes complete sense.

    June 19, 2008

  • One of only two(?) minimal pairs contrasting /ð/ and /θ/ initially: /ðaʊ/ "you" ~ /θaʊ/ "thousandth of an inch" (or colloquially "thousand"). The other initial pair is 'thus'; final contrasts occur in 'mouth' (n. and v.) and possibly 'withe'/'with'.

    June 10, 2009

  • Also called the mil; defined as 1/1,000 of an inch (25.4 µm), frequently used to measure the thickness of very thin materials such as film and plastic sheeting.

    March 1, 2011

  • pron: this pronoun is still much in use. Farmers in general ‘thou’ their servants; the inferior class (and the lower class of men in general) frequently their wives, and always their children; and the children as invariably ‘thou’ each other. Superiors in general ‘thou’ their inferiors; while inferiors ‘you’ their betters. Equals and intimates of the lower class generally ‘thou’ one another. These distinctions are sometimes the cause of aukwardness: to ‘you’ a man may be making too familiar with him; while to ‘thou’ him might affront him. PROVINCIALISMS OF EAST YORKSHIRE;BY MR. MARSHALL; 1788.

    January 12, 2018