Thorn with stroke explained

(minuscule: ), or Þ (thorn) with stroke was a scribal abbreviation common in the Middle Ages. It was used for English, Old (ca.450-1100);: þæt (Modern English "that"), as well as Norse, Old: þor-, the Norse, Old: -þan/Norse, Old: -ðan in Norse, Old: síðan,[1] Norse, Old: þat, Norse, Old: þæt, and Norse, Old: þess. In Old English texts, the stroke tended to be more slanted, while in Old Norse texts it was straight. In Middle English times, the ascender of the þ was reduced (making it similar to the Old English letter Wynn, ƿ), which caused the thorn with stroke abbreviation to be replaced with a thorn with a small t above the letter .

Unicode encodes Ꝥ as, and ꝥ at .

A thorn with a stroke on the descender also exists, used historically as an abbreviation for the word "through".[2] The codepoints are, and .

References

Notes and References

  1. AM 655, p1 recto, lines 4, 14, & 17 http://gandalf.uib.no:8008/corpus/document.xml?corpus=menota&document=AM655-XXX-1-0&position=0:0+0+0&mode=facs&homepage=/corpus/menota.xml
  2. Web site: London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A ix, The Owl and the Nightingale, language 2 . www.lel.ed.ac.uk . 15 May 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180616210249/http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/tagged_data/cotowlbt.html . June 16, 2018 . en . live.