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It is the past tense of the verb to be, second person singular. It always goes with the pronoun "thou". At one time, "thou" was the only way that you could talk about the person you were addressing, and it took its own set of verb forms. In Shakespeare's day, the thou forms were being replaced with the you forms which existed already for when you were addressing a whole bunch of people. Since then the you forms have taken over almost completely.

The equivalent expression for "thou wast" is "you were", so that "Thou wast the prettiest babe that ever I nursed" means the same as "You were the prettiest babe that ever I nursed".

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13y ago

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