Thorn with stroke

(minuscule: ), 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 as U+A764 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE (HTML Ꝥ), and at U+A765 LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE (HTML ꝥ).

A thorn with a stroke on the descender also exists. The codepoints are U+A766 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER (HTML Ꝧ), and U+A767 LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER (HTML ꝧ).

References

  1. AM 655, p1 recto, lines 4, 14, & 17


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