prithee - common?

[mkenuk]

'prithee' appeared as a common word in the recent 'therapies' Challenge game.
It was played by 36 from 376 players. Less than 10%.
COD describes it as 'archaic'.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought that such words were usually classed as rare in Chi, or might we expect to see 'zounds' and 'gadzooks' in future puzzles, in a 7x7 game perhaps?
They are both in COD.

 

[Jacki]

Yes I only know prithee through Chi. Another word to add to the "vocab" - tee hee.

[TRex]

Agreed. I would have brought it up myself.

[rogue_mother]

Really? I mean, really??!! Just because it is archaic does not mean it is unknown, particularly when it comes to Chihuahua. The Chi lexicon is supposed to represent words known in common by fairly well-read speakers of the several major variants of English. Even RF, who is no scholar of English, knows prithee.  He didn't find it, but it didn't surprise him when he saw it in the solution set. When we were in high school, we read works by Shakespeare every single year, and we did not go to "select" high schools. I suppose it is possible that I am mistaking our own school experiences for what is ordinary in other parts of my own or other countries. I would consider it sad, indeed, if English students in other countries (say, for example, England) did not read works by one of their language's most universally acclaimed writers. And Shakespeare is certainly not the only author to use this word, then or now. The Corpus of Contemporary American English and the British National Corpus at Brigham Young University have contemporary examples from science fiction and historical fiction.

[pat]

Being somewhat of a pleb, I absolutely hated Shakespeare when I was at school and the same is still true. 

[TRex]

ISTM a lot of words have been demoted to uncommon/rare which are more common than prithee — e.g. orate which the OED places in Frequency Band 4 (words which occur between 0.1 and 1.0 times per million words in typical modern English usage) whilst prithee is in Frequency Band 2 (words which occur fewer than 0.01 times per million words in typical modern English usage).

Several years ago, I was told by a man about 25 years my junior that his experience was that young adults could not comprehend the English used in the Authorised Version / King James Version of the Bible (e.g. the -eth endings, thee, thine, thou, etc.). I was very surprised. But people are no longer being exposed to English texts of the 18th century and earlier (hardly 19th century texts).

[rogue_mother]

To me it is not a question of whether or not it is used frequently; the question is: Should a reasonably well-read speaker of English know the word? My point here is that I would expect them know the word prithee, whether or not they are able to quickly find it during their Chihuahua play. As for orate, I'm not convinced it should have been reclassified, nor, for that matter, alit. People know these words, even if they don't use them.

[mkenuk]

I think there is more to 'knowing' a word than simply recognising a group of letters which can be played in a word-game or entered as an answer in a crossword puzzle.
I think 'knowing' a word should imply knowing, or at least having a fair idea of, what it means.

A couple of weeks ago, shortly after querying the common status of prithee, I asked two friends, educated native speakers, one Brit and one West Virginian, if they knew the word prithee. They both knew it to be 'old-fashioned and Shakespearean', but when I asked them what its nearest equivalent was in modern English, one thought it mean 'sorry' and the other thought it was a greeting of some kind.
In fact, its closest modern-day equivalent is 'please', from 'I pray thee'.

Did my friends 'know' the word or not?

Top-level Scrabble players 'know' hundreds, possibly thousands of words, especially short ones, which are not in my vocabulary but which they are able to use in championship competitions.
Kids in spelling bee contests are asked to spell words such as 'psittacosis' and 'homunculus', which they can do amazingly well, having learned them from printed sheets.
They 'know' the words, they can spell them, but could they use them in a meaningful sentence?

As for TRex's comment about young people not understanding the wonderful English of the King James Bible, I'm not surprised.

Few people these days, not just youngsters, seem to be able to read and comprehend anything which is more than 140 characters in length.

[anona]

Well, we're all different.

I'm really surprised if people don't know "prithee" or can't guess what it means; and although for some people on this forum "orate" is well-known, I hadn't seen or heard it until I started on chi. Once I'm told orate - corrected to irate by my spellchecker! - is a word, it's obvious what it means, of course.

Pat: don't you even like some of the Sonnets? Is it most works of the time you dislike, or just Shakespeare because it was forced  on you?

[pat]

Pat: don't you even like some of the Sonnets? Is it most works of the time you dislike, or just Shakespeare because it was forced  on you?

I’m a simple soul, anona. I find poetry too arty-farty for my liking. Most art leaves me equally unimpressed. When I was at school we still had ‘O’ levels, and for English lit the books were Macbeth and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Neither of them did anything for me - if I’m reading something I don’t want to have to work out what the writer is trying to say. I’ve always been a tell it like it is sort of person. As I said, a simple soul. 

[cmh]

I am an old fashioned soul as I liked the Shakespeare I studied at both O an A level and whilst I am not really a religious person I prefer the King James language and traditional services.(No happy clappy for me thanks!) Both contributed significantly to my education and in particular to my vocabulary. Often when playing Chi there are words that I know from these sources and understand the meaning of and the context in which they should be used but as others have said  - that does not always mean that I spot those words!

[Jacki]

Well I think jailor is a lot more common than prithee, maybe it's the convict history of our heritage.

[birdy]

While I didn't know the derivation of "prithee" from "pray thee," I knew the word - yes, probably from Shakespeare. I always interpreted it as a synonym for "please," as in "please [do something]".