There’s been a perennial question bugging the heck out of us at Faire.
We all know “prithee” means “please” - it’s actually a contraction of “pray thee” and “gramercy” is “thank you” but none of us have a clue what the counterpart to that is. What would be the term for “You’re welcome”?
Just a bump to the left… 110 reads, but no responses?
I feel a little smarter today – I had never previously heard that “gramercy” ever meant something like “thank you”. There’s a town nearby called Gramercy, LA … I only know of the term as a proper noun.
That said, the American Heritage dictionary gives the goods on the origin of the interjection “gramercy”:
Sorry, don’t know of any archaic forms of “You’re welcome”.
Gotpasswords, you may find the following site interesting reading – How to Speak Like an Elizabethan.
Scroll down to pg 10 to learn of many Elizabethan equivalents for everyday modern phrases. Unfortunately, “you’re welcome” is not included.
Maybe it was “you’re welcome” back then, too? Any Shakespearian experts to vouch for use of “you’re welcome” in the Bard’s works?
Off the top of my head “Gramercy” is used when big favours have been granted, (I presume it is an abbreviation of ‘Grand Merci’, a sort of ‘big thank you’.) I can’t think of a case where I’ve seen a cheery “you’re welcome” resposne. It wouldn’t be appropriate.
To answer this question, I did a search on Shakespeare’s plays. The answer seems clear enough. From Cymbeline:
I suspect that “You’re welcome” was also used. Keep in mind that “you” for first person singular was originally used toward someone of greater rank than oneself. I saw an example in another play of “You’re welcome,” but it was not in direct reply to “thank you.”
I also suspect that in response to “thank you” such phrases as “'tis nothing” were employed, as they are today.
Apparently, “you’re welcome” simply hadn’t been invented.
I guess that’s why some people will occasionally use the painfully awkward “I be thanked” if a situation really and truly calls for “you’re welcome!” To my ears, they should be spanked for that.
“It were nothing” also gets used, and that seems to be the best we can come up with.
Nothing like typing in a response and being called away before hitting Post…
In W.S. Times it was also common to greet a guest .or stranger,with the term"well recieved" ,or ,“well met”!, as in,“Hail .goodfellow, well met!”
But this fell by the wayside with the introduction of the German/Dutch greeting
“wellkommen”
EZ
The OED has citations for welcome going back as far as Beowulf, but their first attestation of the exact phrase “you are welcome” or “you’re welcome” is 1907.
Of course as an earlier poster mentioned, phrases like “thou art welcome” were present in Shakesperean times, and given how the English pronoun system has collapsed in modern english, the 1907 date is hardly surprising.
Well, where did “you’re welcome” get the modern meaning? By itself, “welcome” has its parallels in other languages – willkommen or bienvenidos, both of which I parse to literally mean, as in English, “well come,” something that’s well received. In English, though, we use “you’re welcome” as a response to thank you, which is not done in German or Spanish, but it makes sense in English: “Thanks for the apples.” And then, “Oh, you’re welcome to those apples,” and then just later shortened to “You’re welcome.” In German (as kind of in English) when someone says thanks, you say “please.” (Like, “oh, please, you’re welcome to them.”). Or in Spanish, “it’s nothing.”
So with “welcome” firmly established in German and Romance languages, why did it start getting used in response to “thank you” in English, and when?