Thorn (letter)
Þþ
Thorn, or
þorn (Þ, þ), is a letter in the
Anglo-Saxon and
Icelandic alphabets. It was also used in
medieval Scandinavia, but was later replaced with
th. The letter originated from the
rune , called
thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and
thurs ("
giant") in the Scandinavian
rune poems, its reconstructed
Proto-Germanic name being
*Thurisaz.It has the sound of either a
voiceless interdental fricative, like
th as in the
English word
thick, or a
voiced dental fricative, like
th as in the English word
the. In Modern Icelandic the usage is restricted to the former. The voiced form is represented with the letter
eth (Ð, ð), though that letter can also be unvoiced, depending on position within a sentence.
The letter thorn was used for writing
Old English very early on, like
eth; unlike eth, it remained in common usage through most of the
Middle English period.
The modern digraph
th began to grow in popularity during the
14th century; at the same time, the shape of the thorn grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old
wynn, which had fallen out of use by 1300) and, in some hands, such as that of the scribe of the unique mid-
15th century manuscript of
The Boke of Margery Kempe, ultimately becoming indistinguishable from the letter Y. By this stage
th was predominant, however, and the usage of the thorn was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. In
William Caxton's pioneering printed English, it is rare except in an abbreviated
the, written with a thorn and a superscript E. This was the longest-lived usage, though the substitution of Y for thorn soon became ubiquitous. The first printing of the
King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used the Y form of the thorn with a superscript E in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29. It also used a similar form with a superscript T, which was an abbreviated
that, in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by
the or
that, respectively. The thorn in the form of a Y survives to this day in pseudo-archaic usages, particularly the
stock prefix "Ye olde…".
The
definite article spelled with Y for thorn is often jocularly or mistakenly pronounced "yee" or mistaken for the archaic
nominative case of
you, written
ye. It is used infrequently in some modern English word games to replace the "th" with a single letter.Þ and þ can be generated on an English keyboard.
*Using
Microsoft Windows, one must hold
Alt while typing 0222 or 0254 respectively on the numeric keypad.
*Under
Mac OS X, this character can be typed by choosing [
1] the "U.S. Extended Keyboard" layout and typing option-T or shift-option-T.[
2]
*On
UNIX-like systems such as
Linux it can be entered with the
Compose key plus t and h or T and H for the uppercase version.
*One can also obtain it from Windows' Character Map or Mac OS X's Character Palette.
*In
SGML and derived formats, such as
HTML and some (but not all)
XML dialects, it can be entered as Þ (uppercase) or þ (lowercase).
*The thorn rune is used as a symbol of evil in some of the later
Halloween movies.
*The thorn is sometimes used as part of the
emoticon :-Þ, representing a face with a tongue sticking out.
*
Michael Everson's essay
On the status of the Latin letter þorn and of its sorting order* Oxford Dictionary's FAQ:
Why is 'ye' used instead of 'the' in antique English?*
Thorn and Eth: How to get them rightReferences
* Freeborn, Dennis (1992).
From Old English to Standard English. London: MacMillan.
