you-all

   This special form of ‘you’ is a well known feature of colloquial speech in the American South. It appears to date only from the mid-nineteenth century, though attempts have been made to trace it back to Shakespeare and the King James Bible. Other scholars have argued about whether it is ever used in the singular.

   The general feeling is that in educated use it is always implicitly, if not explicitly, plural. Thus ‘you-all take care now’, even when apparently said to one person, really means ‘you and your folks take care’. In uneducated use ‘youall’ is perhaps mistakenly applied to one person. The new form ‘youalls’ is then brought into play to achieve the plural distinction.