Eth ( ,
uppercase
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''#Majuscule, majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally ''#Minuscule, minuscule'') in the written representation of certain langua ...
: ⟨Ð⟩,
lowercase
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...
: ⟨ð⟩; also spelled edh or eð), known as in
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
, is a
letter used in Old English,
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...
,
Icelandic,
Faroese (in which it is called ), and
Elfdalian.
It was also used in
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...
during the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, but was subsequently replaced with , and later .
It is often
transliterated
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
as .
The lowercase version has been adopted to represent a
voiced dental fricative (
IPA: ) in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
.
Faroese
In
Faroese, is not assigned to any particular phoneme and appears mostly for etymological reasons, but it indicates most
glides. When appears before , it is in a few words pronounced . In the
Faroese alphabet, follows .
Khmer
is sometimes used in
Khmer romanization to represent '.
Icelandic

In
Icelandic, , called "eð", represents an
alveolar non-
sibilant
Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English w ...
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
, voiced intervocalically and word-finally, and voiceless otherwise, which form one phoneme, . Generally, is represented by
thorn at the beginning of words and by elsewhere. The in the name of the letter is devoiced in the nominative and accusative cases: . In the
Icelandic alphabet, follows .
Norwegian
In
Olav Jakobsen Høyem's version of based on , was always silent, and was introduced for etymological reasons.
Old English
In Old English, (called ') was used interchangeably with to represent the Old English
dental fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
or its
allophone
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plos ...
, which exist in modern
English as the
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
and
voiced
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to refe ...
dental fricatives both now spelled .
Unlike the
runic letter , is a modified
Roman letter. Neither nor was found in the earliest records of
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
. A study of
Mercia
Mercia (, was one of the principal kingdoms founded at the end of Sub-Roman Britain; the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons in an era called the Heptarchy. It was centred on the River Trent and its tributaries, in a region now known as the Midlan ...
n
royal diplomas found that began to emerge in the early 8th century, with becoming strongly preferred by the 780s. Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from
Irish writing".
Under the reign of
King Alfred the Great, grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake , and did so completely by the
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English pe ...
period. in turn went obsolete by the
Early Modern English
Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...
period, mostly due to the rise of the
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
,
and was replaced by the digraph .
Welsh
has also been used by some in written
Welsh to represent , which is normally represented as .
Phonetic transcription
* (U+00F0) represents a
voiced dental fricative in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...
.
* (U+1D9E) is used in phonetic transcription.
* ᴆ (U+1D06) is used in the
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.
Computer encoding
Upper and lower case forms of eth have
Unicode
Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...
encodings:
*
*
These Unicode
codepoints were inherited from
ISO/IEC 8859-1 ("ISO Latin-1") encoding.
Modern uses
*A capital eth is used as the
currency symbol for
Dogecoin, a cryptocurrency.
See also
*
*
D
*
*
*
T
*
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
*
* .
{{History of English
Faroese language
Gaulish language
Icelandic language
Middle English
Old English
D
D stroke
D stroke
D
English th