Logo

Which Shakespeare words have completely changed meaning in modern English?

12.06.2025 05:48

Which Shakespeare words have completely changed meaning in modern English?

In Shakespeare’s day, “doubt” meant “fear”…. it did not always mean a lack of confidence in the statement. So, if Shakespeare has a character say:

REV-en-nue

re-VEN-ue

Why do so many people find Kakashi's character so appealing and inspirational?

Sometimes the change in words was a difference in pronunciation. You see this all the time, and some companies ignore this difference. A particularly common case is “revenue” and it comes up a great deal. Shakespeare would have pronounced it this way:

I doubt the French will conquer us today.

To make things even MORE confusing, the use of “thee” and “thou” is still technically correct — technically, it is still valid English to use them. However, almost no one ever uses them anymore, and paradoxically, they sound archaic and thus more formal, not less.

Why can't ugly women date hot guys? I know a woman who wants a hot BF but people would just laugh at her and ask her "what can you bring to the table for him?", isn't that messed up?

What he means is “I FEAR the French will conquer us today.” In today’s English, this sentence would mean the precise opposite — “Relax, because I don’t think the French will conquer us.”

Whereas today we always pronounce it

Several words have changed significantly. One that I always keep on eye out for is “doubt.”

Atheists, there is a god up there in heaven and he loves you so much that he sent his son to die the worst death imaginable and then to turn into a zombie all to save you from sin. Why do you reject him?

And the difference is not trivial, because, to make the meter come out as Shakespeare intended. actors should use the Elizabethan pronunciation, re-VEN-ue.

Another, though less radical change, is the word “doom.” Shakespeare uses this word in it’s traditional meaning, which is roughly the same as “fate.” So does Tolkien. So, Tolkien names the big mountain in Mordor “Mt. Doom,” meaning that this is where the fate of Middle Earth will be decided, for good or ill.

In Shakespeare’s day, people still frequently used the INFORMAL forms of “you,” which are “thee” and “thou” etc. This is highly misleading to today’s audience, because we no longer use “thee” and “thou” to suggest that people are on a first-name basis. For reasons not altogether clear to me, “thee” and “thou” have simply been dropped from common usage.

Chart Industries and Flowserve Corporation to Combine in All-Stock Merger of Equals, Creating a Differentiated Leader in Industrial Process Technologies - Business Wire

But you can still find “thee” and “thou” etc. in any large dictionary as technically correct English, although basically, only poets still use them. (“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou”.)

To most people today, “doom” is necessarily a terrible thing. Traditionally — and in Tolkien and Shakespeare both — “doom” (as in Doomsday) is where fate will be decided. But not necessarily a BAD fate for everyone concerned.

Maybe the most confusing evolution of words is in the area, of the second-person address (that is, the word “you”)…

Nintendo Warns Switch 2 Owners Not to Remove Protective Screen Film - CNET

And yet today, “doom” necessarily means a terrible fate… For in the Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine,” that machine was a giant planet killer that went around wiping out entire civilizations. It therefore meted out a BAD fate, never a good one.