prithee

American  

[prith-ee] / ˈprɪð i /

interjection

Archaic.

1. please: used to politely introduce a request or command.

   Prithee, let us come inside.

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prithee British  

/ ˈprɪðɪ /

interjection

1. archaic pray thee; please

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Etymology

Origin of prithee

First recorded in 1570–80; by shortening and alteration of (I) pray thee

Example Sentences

Writing with her usual spiky language and rich immediacy of detail, she reinvigorated a genre that had long been ridiculed as “relentlessly uncontemporary and easy to caricature, filled with mothballed characters who wear costumes rather than clothes, use words like ‘Prithee,’” as the novelist Jonathan Lee wrote in a recent essay.

From New York Times

Prithee, pass under the faux pirate ship entrance gate and be greeted by a crush of costumed characters.

From Los Angeles Times

Prithee, dear Reader, and fetch me a more exquisite anthology this holiday season?

From Salon

Or, rather, it has been seen as its own fusty fashion, relentlessly uncontemporary and easy to caricature, filled with mothballed characters who wear costumes rather than clothes, use words like “Prithee!” while having modern-day thoughts, and occasionally encounter villains immediately recognizable by their yellow teeth or suspicious smell.

From New York Times

Henny Youngman: Take mine too, prithee.

From Washington Post