Prithee is an archaic English interjection formed from a corruption of the phrase pray thee ([I] ask you [to]), which was initially an exclamation of contempt used to indicate a subject's triviality. The earliest recorded appearance of the word prithee according to the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1577 and the last appearance was in 1875 while it is most commonly found in works from the seventeenth century. The contraction is a form of indirect request that has disappeared from the language.