this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2026
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I'm autistic and out of touch. How do you pronounce this symbol? What even is it? When did this start? Hello fellow kids. Old man weather bones here bringing you some Werther's Originals.
It's "TH" like in "the".
Old english used it because many words were from norse and vikings brought runes as an alphabet with them.
It neither survived that time english decided that french is cool, nor that time press was invented only for latin alphabet.
You can notice remnants of history of this letter by noticing how many english words contain "th" in them.
That is both fascinating to me in a historical context, and infuriates me in a temporal context.
"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."
Also when removing it they replace it with Y, which is whu we have ye such and such, because it used to be the such and such.
Lol I'm old enough I used that character rather than a P for tongue sticking out emoticon (some alt + 4? numbers on an America keyboard unsure if same on others),but learned it's intended sound years later.
I always thought it was a cool character for th sound, but went out of style many moons ago. Thorn is the name I believe.
Thorn sounds very fitting!
thorn, pronounced th. it used to be a letter of the alphabet before it got removed