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What's the proper antique (using "thee") equivalent to "Don't you dare"? Dare thee not? Dare not thee? Something else?

tchrist
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Loren Rosen
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    Shouldn't it be thou? – Peter Shor Feb 01 '20 at 03:13
  • Was thinking it would be similar to "Fare thee well", for which see https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/222733/fare-thee-well-grammar?rq=1 – Loren Rosen Feb 01 '20 at 05:55
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    I’m thinking it would be along the lines of “Thou wouldst not dare” – Jim Feb 01 '20 at 06:03
  • @OrbitalAussie No, thee is in object case, like me. Subject case is thou . – tchrist Feb 01 '20 at 06:08
  • @tchrist. Thank you, I was over my depth here. My reading of the dictionary entry was too simplistic. – Orbital Aussie Feb 01 '20 at 06:42
  • Depending on whether you consider the second person singular of "do" to be "doest" or "dost" - the answer surely is "Dost thou not dare!" or "Doest not thou dare!". Problem is "don't you dare" has an idiomatic quality about it, which is difficult to replace in the little-used singular. – WS2 Feb 01 '20 at 07:55
  • darest thou to ... – Lawrence Feb 01 '20 at 08:15
  • Umm, antique? :) – Lawrence Feb 01 '20 at 08:16
  • Antique? As used in Antique shops? And why “proper”? Is this to discourage vulgar remarks. The question is meaningless without the specification of a particular historical period. And when posting a question here you need to explain what research you have done to answer it yourself. – David Feb 01 '20 at 12:53
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    @Orbital Aussi: that's not how dare thee, that's how dare ye. For Middle English pronouns, ye was the second person plural corresponding to thou in the singular. – Peter Shor Feb 01 '20 at 13:58
  • @PeterShor. Thanks. Yes, I can see that now. I’ll delete my comment now that both points have been disproven! – Orbital Aussie Feb 01 '20 at 21:15
  • I meant archaic but somehow typed 'antique` instead. I couldn't find anything about where the 'not' should go. Looking at 'thee' vs. 'thou' leads to all sorts of confusing and contradictory advice. The context is I'm re-writing the Canadian national anthem as one the US air-traffic-controllers might sing, alluding to the Air Canada near miss. (See e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_759). So something like "Air Canada! Dost thou not dare to land!" might work. (Since the song already uses "thee" and I want to be consistent with that.) – Loren Rosen Feb 02 '20 at 02:56
  • Related. – tchrist Nov 23 '23 at 18:04

1 Answers1

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In Shakespearean usage, thou was the nominative, and thee was the objective. This needs to be the nominative. Further, the imperative conjugation for thou was do, dare, and the indicative was dost, darest. So you would have to use do or dare.

So it would have been one of

Dare thou not,
Dare not thou,
Do not thou dare.

The position of not was flexible in Shakespeare in the imperative, so I believe all of these work. Use whichever of them you think sounds best. From Shakespeare, we have:

We will have vengeance for it, fear thou not.
Come not thou near me.
Do not you meddle; let me deal in this.

(I couldn't find a case where Shakespeare used thou in the third construction, but for Shakespeare, you and thou would have worked in the same way.)

Peter Shor
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