| Π| |
| Letter: | Œ œ ɶ |
| Script: | Latin script |
| Type: | Alphabet |
| Fam1: | OE oe |
| Unicode: | U+0152 U+0153 U+0276 |
| Direction: | Left-to-right |
Œ (minuscule: œ) is a Latin alphabet grapheme, a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used in borrowings from Greek that originally contained the diphthong οι, and in a few non-Greek words. These usages continue in English and French. In French, the words that were borrowed from Latin and contained the Latin diphthong written as œ now generally have é or è; but œ is still used in some non-learned French words, representing open-mid front rounded vowels, such as
œil ("eye") and sœur ("sister").It is used in the modern orthography for Old West Norse and is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the open-mid front rounded vowel. In English runology, œ ɶ is used to transliterate the Runic letter odal (Old English English, Old (ca.450-1100);: ēðel "estate, ancestral home").[1] Its traditional name in English is ethel or œthel (also spelt, ēðel, odal).
Classical Latin wrote the o and e separately (as has today again become the general practice), but the ligature was used by medieval and early modern writings, in part because the diphthongal sound had, by Late Latin, merged into the sound pronounced as /link/. The classical diphthong had the value pronounced as /la/, similar to (standard) English oi as in choice. It occurs most often in borrowings from Greek, rendering that language's οι (in majuscule ΟΙ), although it is also used in some native words such as
coepi "I began".In French, œ is called French: e dans l'o pronounced as /[ə dɑ̃ lo]/, which means e in the o (a mnemotechnic pun used first at school, sounding like French: (des) œufs dans l'eau, meaning eggs in water) or sometimes French: o et e collés, (literally o and e glued) and is a true linguistic ligature, not just a typographic one (like the fi or fl ligatures), reflecting etymology. It is most prominent in the words French: [[wikt:mœurs|mœurs]] ("mores"), French: [[wikt:cœur|cœur]] ("heart"), French: [[wikt:sœur|sœur]] ("sister"), French: [[wikt:œuf|œuf]] ("egg"), French: [[wikt:bœuf|bœuf]] ("beef", "steer"), French: [[wikt:œuvre|œuvre]] ("work") and French: [[wikt:œil|œil]] ("eye"), in which the digraph œu, like eu, represents the sound pronounced as /link/ (in other cases, like plurals French: [[wikt:œufs|œufs]] ("eggs") and French: [[wikt:bœufs|bœufs]] ("steers"), it stands for pronounced as /link/).
French also uses œ in direct borrowings from Latin and Greek. So, "coeliac" in French is French: [[wikt:cœliaque|cœliaque]]. In such cases, the œ is classically pronounced pronounced as /[e]/, or, sometimes, in modern pronunciation, pronounced as /[œ]/. In some words, like French: [[wikt:phénix|phénix]] and French: [[wikt:économique|économique]], the etymological œ is changed to a more French é.
In French placenames of German origin (mostly in and around Alsace-Lorraine, historically Germanic-speaking areas that have changed hands between France and Germany (or Prussia before 1871) a number of times), œ replaces German ö and is pronounced pronounced as /[œ]/. Examples include Schœneck (Moselle), Kœtzingue (Haut-Rhin), and Hœrdt (Bas-Rhin).
In all cases, œ is alphabetized as oe, rather than as a separate letter.
When French: oe occurs in French without the ligature, it is pronounced pronounced as //wa// or sometimes pronounced as //wɛ//, just like words spelt with French: oi. The most common words of this type are French: [[wikt:poêle|poêle]] ("stove", "frying pan") and French: [[wikt:moelleux|moelleux]] ("soft"). French: poêle is itself an etymological spelling, with the French: ê reflecting its derivation from Latin Latin: [[wikt:patella|patella]]. If the French: oe is not to be pronounced thus, then a diaeresis, acute or grave accent needs to be added in order to indicate that the vowels should be pronounced separately. For example, French: [[wikt:Noël|Noël]], French: [[wikt:poésie|poésie]], French: [[wikt:poète|poète]]. The exception to this rule is when a morpheme ending in French: o is joined to one beginning in French: e, as in French: [[wikt:électroencéphalogramme|électroencéphalogramme]], or with the prefix French: co-, which is always pronounced pronounced as //ko// in hiatus with the following vowel, as in French: [[wikt:coefficient|coefficient]] ("ratio", "coefficient").
In Lombard "œ" represents in many writing systems, sometimes along with "u", the pronounced as //øː// phoneme. For example: [[wikt:tegnœra|tegnœura]] (bat).
A number of words written with œ were borrowed from French and from Latin into English, where the œ is now rarely written. Modern American English spelling usually substitutes œ with e, so diarrhœa has become diarrhea, although there are some exceptions, such as phoenix. In modern British English, the spellings generally keep the o but remove the ligature (e.g. diarrhoea).
The œ ~ oe ~ e is traditionally pronounced as "short Ĕ", as "long Ē", or as an (unrounded) unstressed vowel. These three Modern-English values interchange with one another in consistent ways, just as do the values within each of the sets from the other vowel-spellings that at the Middle English stage likewise represented non-diphthongs — except for, as was recognised particularly in certain positions by Dobson[2] a tendency whereby
"... long vowels are, in later use, often substituted ... cf. Pres(ent-Day) E(nglish) [iːkənɒmik] 'economic' in place of the popular [ekənɒmik], which (latter) is in accord with the normal rules and must be regarded as the traditional and naturally-developed pronunciation ...".
There are a few words that English has recently borrowed from contemporary French. The pronunciation of these English words is generally an approximation to that of the French word (the French use pronounced as /link/ or pronounced as /link/ in terms of the International Phonetic Alphabet). English-speakers use a variety of substitutions for these sounds. The words involved include French: manœuvre, French: hors d'œuvre, French: [[wikt:oeuvre|œuvre]], and French: [[œil de bœuf]].
However, most œ words use the traditional English pronunciation of borrowings from/via pre-modern French and from/via Latin. Examples are listed in the following categories, into which they have been divided by developments in our pronunciation since Middle English.
Examples: onomatopœic, onomatopœia, dyspnœa, apnœa, amenorrhœa, diarrhœa, logorrhœa, Eubœa, Bœotia, homœosis, homœopathy; homœopath; homœopathic, homœostatic, homœostasis, homœozoic, homœomorphic, and homœomorphism.
Examples: tragœdy, (arch)diœcese; œconomisation, œsophageal; œsophagus, œcologist, œcology, œconomise, œconomist, œconomy, œdema, œnologist, œnology, ..., pœnology, and Phœnician.
Examples: subpœna(ing), phœnix(es), (fœticide, which belongs in this category if the first vowel is pronounced as long Ē due to carry-over from the next word,) fœtus, Phœbe, fœtor, pœnal, Crœsus, and amœba.
Examples: cœliac and Mœsia(n), which (depending on the dialect) equal and ~ ~ ~.
Examples: Confœderates, (con)fœderate (adj.), to (con)fœderate, fœderal(ly), Œdipal, Œdipus, pœnalty, and fœtid.
The likes of fœ̯tid, though superficially exceptional here, do indeed belong here in this category because the counting properly includes also final -e that has gone silent since Middle English (and therefore has been left out by some spellings) in those situations where speakers before the -es demise, such as Chaucer (who did not drop it in rhymes), would have had the -e as an intrinsic part of the word (rather than as just a suffix) — save for its regularly disappearing where followed with no pause by a word beginning with a vowel or sometimes .
As less-circumstantial evidence (than this word's modern short Ĕ) that it contained the final -e, consider both the spelling of its earliest attestation in English recorded by the NED, within "It maketh to blister both handes, & feet, out of which issueth foetide, and stinckinge water." (in a text dating to 1599). And from the immediate ancestor of the word, lying between it and Latin's , -a, -um, namely, Anglo-Norman fetide, attested 13th century.
The symbol pronounced as /[œ]/ is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for the open-mid front rounded vowel. This sound resembles the "œu" in the French French: [[wikt:œuf|œuf]] or the "ö" in the German German: [[wikt:öffnen|öffnen]]. These contrast with French French: [[wikt:feu|feu]] and German German: [[wikt:schön|schön]], which have the close-mid front rounded vowel, pronounced as /[ø]/.
The small capital variant pronounced as /[ɶ]/ represents the open front rounded vowel in the IPA. Modifier letter small ligature oe (pronounced as /ꟹ/) is used in extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
is used as an IPA superscript letter.[5]
The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) includes .
The Teuthonista phonetic transcription system uses several related symbols:
In Unicode, the characters are encoded at and . In ISO-8859-15, Œ is 0xBC and œ/ɶ 0xBD. In Windows-1252, at positions 0x8C and 0x9C. In Mac-Roman, they are at positions 0xCE and 0xCF.
Œ and œ/ɶ were omitted from ISO-8859-1 (as well as derived standards, such as IBM code page 850), which are still widespread in internet protocols and applications. Œ is the only character in modern French that is not included in ISO-8859-1, and this has led to it becoming replaced by 'oe' in many computer-assisted publications (including printed magazines and newspapers). This was due, in part, to the lack of available characters in the French ISO/IEC 646 version that was used earlier for computing. Another reason is that œ is absent from most French keyboards, and as a result, few people know how to input it.
The above-mentioned small capital of the International Phonetic Alphabet is encoded at .