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 The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engl ...

( 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 Faroese orthography is the method employed to write the Faroese language, using a 29-letter Latin alphabet, although it does not include the letters C, Q, W, X and Z. Alphabet The Faroese alphabet consists of 29 letters derived from the Latin s ...

, follows .

Khmer

is sometimes used in Khmer romanization to represent '.

Icelandic

In Icelandic, , called "eð", represents an

alveolar Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit. Uses in anatomy and zoology * Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs ** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte ** Alveolar duct ** Alveolar macrophage * M ...

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

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 Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets, known as runic rows, runic alphabets or futharks (also, see '' futhark'' vs ''runic alphabet''), native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were primarily used to represent a sound value (a ...

letter , is a modified

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

letter. Neither nor was found in the earliest records of

. 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

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

in the

. * (U+1D9E) is used in phonetic transcription. * ᴆ (U+1D06) is used in the

Uralic Phonetic Alphabet Finno-Ugric transcription (FUT) or the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nesto ...

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

codepoint A code point, codepoint or code position is a particular position in a table, where the position has been assigned a meaning. The table may be one dimensional (a column), two dimensional (like cells in a spreadsheet), three dimensional (sheets in ...

s were inherited from

ISO/IEC 8859-1 ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology—8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets—Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1987 ...

("ISO Latin-1") encoding.

Modern uses

*A capital eth is used as the

currency symbol A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by a monetary authority, such as the national central bank for the currency concerned. A symbol may be positioned in various ways, acc ...

for

Dogecoin Dogecoin ( or , Abbreviation: DOGE; sign: Ð) is a cryptocurrency created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a joke, making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the t ...

, a cryptocurrency.

References

External links

* * . {{History of English Faroese language Gaulish language Icelandic language Middle English Old English D D stroke D stroke D English th