What does doest mean?
"Doest" is an archaic verb form: the second person singular present tense of the common English verb "do." In Early Modern English, verbs took distinct endings depending on the subject, so while one would say "I do" or "they do," addressing a single person required "thou doest." The form is most familiar today from the King James Bible — "if thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?" — and from the plays of Shakespeare. Although it has vanished from ordinary modern speech, where "you do" covers all persons, it remains culturally significant as a marker of the language of that era. Readers encountering it should understand it simply as meaning "you do," addressed to one person, and recognize its presence as a deliberate signal of antiquated or elevated register rather than a grammatical error.
verb"Doest" is the archaic second person singular present form of the verb "do," used with the pronoun "thou." It appears chiefly in Early Modern English, as in the works of Shakespeare and the King James Bible.
- The second person singular present indicative of the verb "do," used with "thou" in archaic English.
"Thou doest well to question what thou hast been told."
"What doest thou here, my son?"
"If thou doest good, shalt thou not be accepted?"
Say "doest" aloud and you'll likely pronounce it like "dust" — exactly how Shakespeare's actors would have said it on stage.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of doest
The word derives from Old English "dōn," meaning "to do, perform, execute," one of the most ancient verbs in the Germanic language family. Its ending "-est" was the standard second person singular inflection in Old and Middle English, attached to verbs when addressing a single familiar individual with "thou." As English gradually abandoned "thou" in favor of "you" during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forms like "doest" fell out of everyday use, surviving mainly in religious and literary contexts. It shares deep Germanic roots with related words such as "deed" and "doom."
How doest is actually used
Strictly archaic and literary; encountered almost exclusively in Early Modern English texts such as Shakespeare and the King James Bible. In speech it is often pronounced to rhyme with "dust," reflecting historical pronunciation conventions for -st endings after "do." Modern English uses simply "do" regardless of the subject.
Easily confused with doest
"Does't" is a contraction of "does it" or a variant spelling, whereas "doest" is specifically the second-person singular form used with "thou."