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English Language & Usage

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    In something akin to the "euphemism treadmill" effect, the You/Ye form, always used for politeness even when referring to one person, came to be used more and more until Thou/Thee was thought rude. Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 21:08
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    Printing press would have been another reason. 'th' was printed using 'y', so thou would have been you. People start reading it that way, and saying it the same way as well. Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 23:30
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    "Used to be?" You haven't spent much time in Ireland, I see ;) ...and judging by the comments, neither have the rest of ye Commented Apr 22, 2011 at 23:36
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    There's some argument that says thee/thou fell out of use because the (unpopular at the time) Quakers started insisting on using it. (There were philosophical reasons to avoid the formal ye/you, I guess.) It thus became indicative of being a Quaker, which made everyone else stop using it. One article mentioning this is "Language and the Culture of Gender" (Michael Silverstein, 1985) which also blames social forces for "they" and "their" taking over as gender-neutral 3rd person singular. Using "he" to mean gender-unspecified became indicative of unpopular political views, so that usage died. Commented Apr 23, 2011 at 0:36
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    @migo: I really don't believe that printing had anything to do with the disappearance of "thou". I don't think the use of "Y" for "þ" was actually very widespread or lasted very long, and anyway, at the time when "thou" was going out of use (much later), most people could not read Commented Jun 1, 2011 at 16:38