A word used before nouns with a specifying or particularizing effect, opposed to the indefinite or generalizing force of a or an: as, the gods are careless of mankind; the sun in heaven; the day is fair; long live the king!A word used before a noun to indicate a species or genus: as, the song of the nightingale: used in generalization: as, the man that hath no music in himself.A word used with a title, or as part of a title: as, the Duke of Wellington; the Right Honorable the Earl of Derby; the Lord Brook; the Reverend John Smith.Indicating the most approved, most desirable, most conspicuous, or most important of its kind: as, Newport is the watering-place of the United States: in this use emphatic, and frequently italicized. The is often placed before a person's (especially a woman's) name, to indicate admiration or notoriety (a colloquial use): as, the Elssler.Before adjectives used substantively, denoting: An individual: as, she gazed long on the face of the dead.A class, or a number of individuals: as, the good die first; do not mix the new with the old.An abstract notion: as, the beautiful.Denoting that which is well known or famed: as, the prodigal son.Used distributively to denote any one separately: as, the fare is a dollar the round trip.Used in place of the possessive pronoun to denote a personal belonging: as, to hang the head and weep.Used to denote a particular day in relation to a given week, or to some other day of the same Week.Used before a participial infinitive, or gerund, followed by an object: the article is now omitted in this construction.Used before the relative which: now an archaism.[The is generally pronounced as if a syllable (unaccented) of the following word (a proclitic), and its vowel is accordingly obscured, before a consonant, into the neutral vowel-sound of her or but, very lightly sounded (quite like the French “mute e”); before a vowel, often in the same manner, but more usually with the short i sound of pin, only less distinct; when emphatic, as the long e of thee. In poetry, before a word beginning with a vowel-sound, the vowel of the generally may slide into that of the next word, and form with it one metrical syllable; metrically the e is accordingly often cut off in printing. The same so-called elision (synalephe) often took place in Middle English, the being written with the following noun as one word: as, themperour, the emperor.In Middle English manuscripts the was often written, as in Anglo-Saxon þe, with the character þ; in early print this character was represented by a form nearly like y, and later printers actually used y instead, þe, erroneously printed þe as if contracted, like þt for that, being printed ye or ye but always pronounced, of course, the. Modern archaists often affect ye for the, and many pronounce it as it looks, “yē.”Used to modify adjectives and adverbs in the comparative degree:Used without correlation, it signifies in any degree; in some degree: as, Are you well ? The better for seeing you.See thee.A Middle English form of though.n. A Middle English form of thigh.
