In a period of rapid linguistic change the translators avoided contemporary idioms, tending instead towards forms that were already slightly archaic, like "verily" and "it came to pass". The pronouns "thou"/"thee" and "ye"/"you" are consistently used as singular and plural respectively, even though by this time "you" was often found as the singular in general English usage, especially when addressing a social superior (as is evidenced, for example, in Shakespeare). For the possessive of the third person pronoun, the word "its", first recorded in the "Oxford English Dictionary" in 1598, is avoided. The older "his" is usually employed, as for example at : "if the salt have lost "his" savour, wherewith shall it be salted?"; in other places "of it", "thereof" or bare "it" are found. Another sign of linguistic conservatism is the invariable use of "-eth" for the third person singular present form of the verb, as at Matthew 2:13: "the Angel of the Lord appear"eth" to Joseph in a dreame". The rival ending "-(e)s", as found in present-day English, was already widely used by this time (for example, it predominates over "-eth" in the plays of Shakespeare and Marlowe). Furthermore, the translators preferred "which" to "who" or "whom" as the relative pronoun for persons, as in : "And Lot also "which" went with Abram, had flocks and heards, & tents" although "who(m)" is also found.