Thorn with stroke

Ꝥꝥ

Ꝥ (minuscule: ꝥ), or Þ (thorn) with stroke was a scribal abbreviation common in the Middle Ages. It was used for Old English: þæt (Modern English "that"), as well as Old Norse: þor-, the -þan/-ðan in síðan,^[1] þat, þæt, and 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 U+A764 Ꝥ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE, and ꝥ at U+A765 ꝥ LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE.

A thorn with a stroke on the descender also exists, used historically as an abbreviation for the word "through".^[2] The codepoints are U+A766 Ꝧ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER, and U+A767 ꝧ LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER.

References

1. AM 655, p1 recto, lines 4, 14, & 17 [1]
2. "London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A ix, The Owl and the Nightingale, language 2". www.lel.ed.ac.uk. Archived from the original on June 16, 2018. Retrieved 15 May 2023.

• Baker, Peter; et al. (30 January 2006). Everson, Michael (ed.). "Proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Retrieved 25 November 2017.
• "Proposal to add LATIN LETTER THORN WITH DIAGONAL STROKE to the UCS" (PDF). 17 October 2017. Retrieved 25 November 2017.
• Andrew West, What's that? Archived 2010-10-12 at the Wayback Machine, an article about the proposal to add medievalist characters to the UCS
• Unicode Character 'Latin capital letter thorn with stroke' (U+A764)
• Unicode Character 'Latin small letter thorn with stroke' (U+A765)