The Trickiest Word in English
You’ve seen the word before. It’s featured all the time in movies because it looks fancy and of a certain age. It’s probably the Bible’s favorite word. You say it to vote yes. It’s the 42nd most popular Chinese surname, and of course, it’s the worst album of former presidential candidate and all-around totally stable dude, Kanye “Ye” West.
I always thought “ye” was just an archaic form of “you,” or something to this effect, but the reality is much more interesting. What are the many meanings of the word “Ye”?
The most common usage of the word “ye” is the old English “ye” which is a nominative plural pronoun of the 2nd person. In plain language, “ye” was what you’d use as “You” for the subject of a sentence. Similar to the “thou” but more formal. So a sentence like a commandment of “thall shalt not...whatever” is informal, (God’s totally casual…) whereas “ye shall do whatever” is more formal. It’s basically only used now by Shakespeare wannabes, religious types, or believe it or not, actual real world people in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The actual old English spelling was closer to “ge” than “ye.” And this wouldn’t be the first spelling confusion for the many meanings of “ye.”
There’s one more “ye” which is less-known and much more confusing than the previous. You’ve probably seen “ye” used like in the term “Ye Olde Gift Shop.” This would be very confusing if it was meant to say “you olde gift shop.” Unless, you were, in fact, not a person, but an old gift shop. In which case it probably would make perfect sense to you.
Instead, this “ye” is very different from the biblical one. This “ye” actually means “the,” that’s because the “y” in the word is actually a different letter for “th.” This “ye” is actually “the.” The “y” in this word is called a “thorn,” which was a letter used in a bunch of old languages. It even still hangs on in the modern Icelandic alphabet.
The letter comes from the ancient Scandinavian rune which despite having no historical relation whatsoever, looks very similar to the ancient Greek letter (Þ) “sho.” The letter grew in usage around the 14th century. The most likely reason for this was that the printer’s type fonts that were imported from Germany had a letter “Y” but not for “Þ.” Today we might read “ye” in “ye olde gift shop” as “ye,” but no one would've done that. Everyone knew it was to be read and said as “the.”
Truly, “ye” is one of our language’s finest two letter words. What other two letter word could only be used once for each unique case and still make as much sense as the sentence: “‘Ye,’ said Ye approvingly while at Ye Book Shoppe wearing Ye’s Yeezy’s and listening to ye while reading a Bible verse beginning with “ye.””?
Chapters
0:00 The Many Meanings of "Ye"
0:54 Ye
2:00 Ye Olde and the Thorn
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