Which Shakespeare words have completely changed meaning in modern English?

Maybe the most confusing evolution of words is in the area, of the second-person address (that is, the word “you”)…

REV-en-nue

And yet today, “doom” necessarily means a terrible fate… For in the Star Trek episode “The Doomsday Machine,” that machine was a giant planet killer that went around wiping out entire civilizations. It therefore meted out a BAD fate, never a good one.

Making a Diving Catch For Space - NASA Watch

Another, though less radical change, is the word “doom.” Shakespeare uses this word in it’s traditional meaning, which is roughly the same as “fate.” So does Tolkien. So, Tolkien names the big mountain in Mordor “Mt. Doom,” meaning that this is where the fate of Middle Earth will be decided, for good or ill.

To make things even MORE confusing, the use of “thee” and “thou” is still technically correct — technically, it is still valid English to use them. However, almost no one ever uses them anymore, and paradoxically, they sound archaic and thus more formal, not less.

What he means is “I FEAR the French will conquer us today.” In today’s English, this sentence would mean the precise opposite — “Relax, because I don’t think the French will conquer us.”

For 9 Days, Earth Was Sending Out Mysterious Signals. Now We Know What They Were. - Yahoo

To most people today, “doom” is necessarily a terrible thing. Traditionally — and in Tolkien and Shakespeare both — “doom” (as in Doomsday) is where fate will be decided. But not necessarily a BAD fate for everyone concerned.

I doubt the French will conquer us today.

In Shakespeare’s day, “doubt” meant “fear”…. it did not always mean a lack of confidence in the statement. So, if Shakespeare has a character say:

Why is my ex still keeping in touch with me even though she dumped me?

In Shakespeare’s day, people still frequently used the INFORMAL forms of “you,” which are “thee” and “thou” etc. This is highly misleading to today’s audience, because we no longer use “thee” and “thou” to suggest that people are on a first-name basis. For reasons not altogether clear to me, “thee” and “thou” have simply been dropped from common usage.

Sometimes the change in words was a difference in pronunciation. You see this all the time, and some companies ignore this difference. A particularly common case is “revenue” and it comes up a great deal. Shakespeare would have pronounced it this way:

Whereas today we always pronounce it

Family scapegoats with years of healing: what events or thoughts precipitated your full acceptance of your family's narcissistic dynamic? Can you share your inner thoughts as you reached it? How do we know when we have reached full acceptance?

And the difference is not trivial, because, to make the meter come out as Shakespeare intended. actors should use the Elizabethan pronunciation, re-VEN-ue.

Several words have changed significantly. One that I always keep on eye out for is “doubt.”

But you can still find “thee” and “thou” etc. in any large dictionary as technically correct English, although basically, only poets still use them. (“A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou”.)

Trump White House opens door to historic military deployment on U.S. soil - The Washington Post

re-VEN-ue