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I saw a Geico commercial with Elizabethan verb forms that bothered me because they were being misused:

Trick Number 1. Lookest over there!
Servant looks
Haha! Madest thou look!
So endest the trick!

How would a native speaker of Elizabethan English have phrased these sentences? Specifically, what verb forms would they have used if this scene were authentic?

Erik Kowal
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Brian J. Fink
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  • The problem isn't only with the verbs. After they're fixed, "thou" should become "thee". – Andreas Blass Feb 16 '14 at 22:48
  • @AndreasBlass, that's one of the things I was going to post in my answer. – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 22:50
  • "Proofreading questions are off-topic unless a specific source of concern in the text is clearly identified." The questioner said "the problem is with the verbs." That sounds pretty specific to me. – phenry Feb 16 '14 at 22:58
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    It's not a proofreading question; it's a grammar exercise. And I was planning to answer it myself. – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 23:03
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    @phenry: read the two comments right above yours. Not specific and the OP knows it. Anyway, this is not even a question in the first place, but a riddle, and as such off-topic. I picked a softer close reason, though, as I indeed always try to do. More often than not, it serves me a fat lot of good. – RegDwigнt Feb 16 '14 at 23:06
  • @Brian Of course it is wrong, in strikingly obvious ways, but it is not its goal or purpose to be right. Just like there is not a single Hollywood movie, no matter how high its budget, in which the evil Russians actually speak anything remotely resembling actual Russian. It's not supposed to be right. It's merely supposed to be alien enough. Same for Middle English and Early Modern English. (Note how Old English is too alien for anybody to even try.) – RegDwigнt Feb 16 '14 at 23:12
  • I have edited my question; can it now be answered? – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 23:19
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    @RegDwigнt - If the close reason does not fit the question, then you shouldn't use it--and if there are no close reasons that fit, then maybe the question shouldn't be closed at all. I don't see a "because it's a riddle" close reason anywhere, and I can't find any prohibition on riddles in the help center. Indeed, this question seems likely to lead to informative answers about verb inflections in early modern English that I, for one, would be interested to read. – phenry Feb 16 '14 at 23:20
  • @phenry I appreciate the edit. That puts it into the realm of the intellectual. – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 23:24
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    I'm not [quite] old enough to remember what we used to say back then, but I probably wouldn't argue with *"Look thou yonder!" ... "Ha! I didst make thee to look!" ... Thus endeth the trick* – FumbleFingers Feb 16 '14 at 23:31
  • @Fumble, close, but not quite. "Look over thither", "Haha! I made thee look," and "so endeth the trick" would have worked just fine. – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 23:35
  • @Brian J. Fink: Are you sure? I thought "thence" had always implied *from there, not to/towards there. And surely archaically it was always he maketh me to lie down, using an "infinitive" form. I did just check so* in OED though (I thought the "in that way" sense was more recent, but you're quite right). – FumbleFingers Feb 16 '14 at 23:41
  • @FumbleFingers as soon as I posted the comment, I edited it to read "thither." – Brian J. Fink Feb 16 '14 at 23:49
  • @Brian: Ah, right! Yeah, that sounds better. But although obviously I don't know what was "idiomatic" back then, look [over] yonder seems to have been around the block. Maybe they did say look thither, but it's not so "familiar" to my modern ear. – FumbleFingers Feb 16 '14 at 23:54
  • @Fumble, if you want to be picky, yes, perhaps "to" was used with infinitives, and maybe they didn't say "over", but I simply wanted to point out the glaring errors, such as global use of 2nd person indicative (or interrogative for the second verb) for forms ranging from imperative to 3rd person indicative. – Brian J. Fink Feb 17 '14 at 00:01
  • @Brian: I'm not with you. How is "Look thou upon us, O Lord, according to thy Mercie" any different to "Look thou yonder"? In 1708 that was "ancient and scarce", according to the preface, and it looks like the same "imperative" form to me. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 03:18
  • @FumbleFingers, I think the cumbersome wording found in the KJV and Duay-Reims bibles comes from the fact that educated men translated them; therefore, the English would have been more Shakespearean in nature—more refined and proper. Perhaps "thou" in an imperatival form is technically correct, but I'm not certain about the use of "yonder" as opposed to "thither." – Brian J. Fink Feb 17 '14 at 18:46
  • @Brian: Google Books has half-a-dozen instances of look yonder before 1680, but none at all for look thither that long ago. I'm no expert on Elizabethan usage, but Google Books does it for me. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 18:52
  • @FumbleFingers but thither is a form from that time period. – Brian J. Fink Feb 17 '14 at 18:57
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    @RegDwigнt is the question on topic yet, or is it hopeless? – Brian J. Fink Feb 17 '14 at 19:05
  • @Brian: I've no reason to doubt you. And of course both words are archaic/dialectal today, so my gut sense of how I personally use (or would use) them may be worthless in terms of assessing how they were used centuries ago. But fwiw, I see thither as more associated with *movement towards "there", whereas yonder* is just ""there". Since your "look" doesn't actually "go" anywhere, to me the natural pairings would be *go thither* and *look yonder*. – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 19:10
  • let us continue this discussion in chat – Brian J. Fink Feb 17 '14 at 19:12
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    @Brian: Apposite comment! I see we're up to 4 "re-open" votes already (perhaps helped along by our extended discussion here! :) – FumbleFingers Feb 17 '14 at 19:12
  • @Brian yes, there's no denying it's much better now. Thank you for editing. – RegDwigнt Feb 18 '14 at 09:53
  • possible duplicate of What happened to the “‑est” and “‑eth” verb suffixes in English? – Tim Lymington Feb 18 '14 at 11:04
  • @Tim this is not a duplicate! Related, possibly; duplicate, absolutely not! – Brian J. Fink Feb 21 '14 at 18:14
  • Brian: the answers there are entirely what you are asking for here, which is what 'duplicate' means in these circumstances. – Tim Lymington Feb 22 '14 at 13:52
  • @Tim: If you read my question, you'll realize that my question is more specific than the other. As a matter of fact, I read that question and posted an answer myself, before I posted my question, unless I am mistaken. – Brian J. Fink Feb 22 '14 at 17:41
  • @Tim, apparently yes, I did answer that question after I asked my own, but I found it before you did, and at no time did I get the impression that my specific question was answered by the more general responses to that question. – Brian J. Fink Feb 22 '14 at 17:51

3 Answers3

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While lookest is a respectable verb form in early modern English, not one of the three instances of the form in your text is appropriate. The form is used only in the second person singular (i.e. with subject thou), and not in the imperative.

So the first one would be just look (but probably not over there. Perhaps yonder).

The second one is interesting because at first sight it looks grammatical, since madest thou is perfectly good early modern English; but it means "did you make", not "I made you". So I made thee look (though, as others have said, probably I made thee to look).

The third one should have the third person ending endeth, not endest.

Colin Fine
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The main problem with the commercial is that the second person indicative/interrogative lookest/madest thou/endest is used for all instances of the verb. Ironically, its use is not warranted in any of the times that it is used!

The first sentence should be imperative, the second sentence first person, and the third sentence third person. The irony is that the more correct they would be, the more they would need to change other words to preserve the archaic sound of the speech:

Trick Number 1: Look thou yonder!
Haha! I made thee to look!
So endeth the trick!

Brian J. Fink
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Up through the Early Modern English that the commercial is botching, personal pronouns were:

  • I (first person singular)
  • thou (second person singular)
  • he, she, it (third person singular)
  • we (first person plural)
  • you/ye (second person plural)
  • they (third person plural)

Like other European languages, English speakers took to brown-nosing by addressing higher-ups with the plural "you" (or a phrase with some form of it, e.g. Spanish usted from "vuestra merced", "y'all's grace"), and now "thou" is pretty much gone save for Quakers' "plain speech", the King James Bible, and Renfairs or historical movies. For regular present tense, it's

I [verb], Thou [verb]est, He/She/It [verb]eth, We [verb], You/Ye [verb], They [verb]

In past tense, the "-est" is still around, but again only for second person singular:

Thou [verb]edst

"-est" isn't used in imperatives (commands); nobody would say "Lookest over there". (English of the time still kept the three-way division of locations that, for example, Spanish and Japanese still have: "here", near the speaker; "there", near the listener, and "yonder", away from both. That's why it should be "Look yonder" or "Look thou yonder".)

A lot of people trying to, to borrow someone's term, write or speak "forsoothly" take the "eth" or "est" suffix they maybe sort of halfway remember from a movie or a sermon or exposure to Shakespeare in junior high and tack it onto every verb in sight. Examples in advertising (like this Geico ad) abound... though if you want far worse abuse of the language, there's a Progressive insurance ad that is utterly cringeworthy.

BTW, shouldn't it be "Trick the first" instead of "Trick number one"?

James Jones
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