Etymology From Middle English ye, ȝe, from Old English ġē (“ye”), the nominative case of the second-person plural personal pronoun, from Proto-West Germanic *jiʀ, from Proto-Germanic *jīz, a North-West variant of Proto-Germanic *jūz (“ye”), from Proto-Indo-European *yúHs (“ye”), plural of *túh₂. Cognate with Scots ye (“ye”), Saterland Frisian jie, Dutch gij, ge, jij, je (“ye”), Low German ji, jie (“ye”), German ihr (“ye”), Danish and Swedish I (“ye”), Icelandic ér (“ye”), Latvian jūs (“ye”), Sanskrit यूयम् (yūyám, “ye”). See also you.
My liefe (ſayd ſhe) ye know, that long ygo, / Whileſt ye in durance dwelt, ye to me gaue / A little mayde, the which ye chylded tho ; / The ſame againe if now ye liſt to haue, / The ſame is yonder Lady, whom high God did ſaue.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 17, page 512:
Queſtion me then no more; whate'er ye want, / Ask in my Name, and God ſhall ſurely grant. / You've asked nothing yet for Jesus sake : / Ask and receive, and of my joyes partake.1671, Elisha Coles, chapter 6, in ΧΡΙΣΤΟΛΟΓΙΑ: Or, a Metrical Paraphraſe on the Hiſtory of Our Lord and Saviour Jeſus Chriſt : Dedicated to His Univerſal Church:
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Was anyone hurted? Sure, they were just trailin' theirselves off the ground. Ye wud have died larfin'. There's Jimmy Hanlon was never his own man since, and I had me nose broke on me—I find it yet—and some says there was a wee girl from Tanderagee got herself killed.1915, Charles L Graves, Humours of Irish life, pages 241-242:
Know Ye that We have declared and by these Presents do declare our Will and Pleasure as follows—[…]1995, Elizabeth II, “Legal Notice 247 of 1996”, in Hong Kong Government Gazette, page B1096:
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; [...]1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 23:
Maybe they'd get hurted!" said the boys. "Hurted, how-are-ye!" says Hughie; "How could anyone get hurted so simple as that? I'd be the last in the world to speak of such a thing in that case! But if yous are afraid of doing it..."1915, Charles L Graves, Humours of Irish life, page 255:
Etymology From Middle English þe. Early press typographies in late 15th century lacked the letter þ (“thorn”), for which the letter y was substituted due to their resemblance in blackletter hand (etymological y was for a while distinguished by a dot, ẏ (14th c.–15th c.)). Short form yͤ continued long after the digraph th had replaced þ elsewhere. "Ye" for "þe" continued in manuscripts through the 18th century. The practice was revived in the United Kingdom in the 19th century as a deliberate antiquarianism in shop names, thus the Ye Olde ... Shoppe construction.
Now vnto yͤ king eternal, immortall, inuiſible, the onely wiſe God, be honour and glory for euer ⁊ euer. Amen.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, 1 Timothy 1:17, column 2:
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It being one cheife proiect of yᵉ ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men from the knowledge of Scriptures, as in formʳ times by keeping yᵐ in an unknowne tongue, so in these lattʳ times by perswading from yᵉ use of tongues, yᵗ so at least yᵉ true sence & meaning of yᵉ originall might be clouded by false glosses of saint seeming deceivers, yᵗ learning may not be buried in yᵉ church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting oʳ endeavoʳs,1647, The old deluder, Satan, Act. (cited in American Public School Law, K. Alexander, M. Alexander, 1995)