Ye olde
"Ye olde" is a pseudo-Early Modern English phrase originally used to suggest a connection between a place or business and Merry England (or the medieval period). The term dates to 1896 or earlier;[1] it continues to be used today, albeit now more frequently in an ironically anachronistic and kitsch fashion.[1]
History
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The use of the term ye to mean "the" derives from Early Modern English, in which the was written þe, employing the Old English letter thorn, Template:Angbr. During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for Template:Char was þͤ or þᵉ ; here, the letter Template:Angle bracket is combined with the letter Template:Angle bracket.[2] With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of Template:Angbr for Template:Angbr became ubiquitous, leading to the common ye as in "Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe". One major reason for this was that Template:Angbr existed in the blackletter types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while Template:Angbr did not,[3] resulting in File:EME ye.svg (yͤ) as well as ye. The connection became less obvious after the letter thorn was discontinued in favour of the digraph Template:Angle bracket. Today, ye is often incorrectly pronounced as the archaic pronoun of the same spelling.[1]
See also
References
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