Why thee best and thee most???

AnonymousWhy do some people say thee best and thee most? I thought you only say thee before a vowel.

Thee is a very old word that means you. I think you mean the.

People say "the best" meaning the one that is better than all the others.

He picked the best puppy in the litter.
He is the best studen

Hi,

AnonymousWhy do some people say thee best and thee most? I thought you only say thee before a vowel.

I think he was talking about the pronunciation and was asking why sometimes "the" is pronounced "ði?" in front of a word starting with a consonant.


strong form /ði?/
weak form /ð?/

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Hi,
Why do some people say thee best and thee most? I thought you only say thee before a vowel.

Some people use this pronunciation when reading aloud, eg from a book.
eg thee cat sat on thee mat

Usually, they

Gee, I missed that the poster was talking about pronunciation,
i.e. the difference between thee (long e sound) and thuh (schwa sound).

The long e sound is said when the is stressed in the sentence, and the schwa sound when it is unstressed, so it all depends on the cadence and meter of the sentence. Stressing a word or phrase makes it stand out in importance from the ot