Which Shakespeare words have completely changed meaning in modern English?

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

I doubt the French will conquer us today.

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.

Chart Industries and Flowserve Corporation to Combine in All-Stock Merger of Equals, Creating a Differentiated Leader in Industrial Process Technologies - Business Wire

Whereas today we always pronounce it

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:

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.

Is it normal to hate my dog, but feel too guilty to get rid of him?

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.

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

re-VEN-ue

What are your funniest "lost in translation" moments if you grew up speaking more than one language?

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:

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.

REV-en-nue

‘Yellowstone’ Star Cole Hauser Talks Directing, Bull Riding and Cowboy Future - The Hollywood Reporter

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.

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.

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.”

My cantankerous beagle is very badly behaved at the dog park and always starts barking at the other dogs. Would pepper spray be an effective method to correct his inappropriate behavior?

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”.)