Which Shakespeare words have completely changed meaning in modern English?

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

Whereas today we always pronounce it

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”.)

And-Ones: NBA On TNT, Offseason, Free Agents, Finals - Hoops Rumors

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.

REV-en-nue

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.”

1-In-100,000 Chance Earth Could Be Yeeted Out Of The Solar System By A Passing Star - IFLScience

I doubt the French will conquer us today.

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

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:

Airlines and planemakers warn that credit card legislation could end frequent-flier rewards - Business Insider

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:

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.

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.

Why do flat earthers delete their answers after being proven wrong? Are they just being ignorant and arrogant?

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.

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.

re-VEN-ue

Boris Johnson says that “Starmer picked a fraudster for his Cabinet because he is the fraudster-in-chief. And he knows, in his heart, that the whole government is a fraud.” Do you agree with Boris Johnson about Starmer?

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.