Editing Eth (section)

==Old English==
In Old English, {{angbr|ð}} (called ''{{lang|ang|ðæt}}'') was used interchangeably with {{angbr|[[thorn (letter)|þ]]}} to represent the Old English [[dental consonant|dental]] [[fricative]] [[phoneme]] {{IPAslink|θ}} or its [[allophone]] {{IPAblink|ð}}, which exist in modern [[English phonology|English]] as the [[voiceless dental fricative|voiceless]] and [[voiced dental fricative|voiced]] dental fricatives both now spelled {{angbr|[[th (digraph)|th]]}}.

Unlike the [[runic]] letter {{angbr|[[þ]]}}, {{angbr|ð}} is a modified [[Roman cursive|Roman]] letter. Neither {{angbr|ð}} nor {{angbr|þ}} was found in the earliest records of [[Old English]]. A study of [[Mercia]]n [[Anglo-Saxon charters|royal diplomas]] found that {{angbr|ð}} began to emerge in the early 8th century, with {{angbr|ð}} becoming strongly preferred by the 780s.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Philip |last=Shaw |title=Adapting the Roman alphabet for writing Old English: evidence from coin epigraphy and single-sheet charters |journal=[[Early Medieval Europe (journal)|Early Medieval Europe]] |volume=21 |issue=2 |year=2013 |pages=115–139 |doi=10.1111/emed.12012 |s2cid=163075636 }}</ref> Another source indicates that the letter is "derived from [[Insular script|Irish writing]]".<ref>{{cite book |last=Freeborn |first=Dennis |title=From Old English to Standard English |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CP16STG5NRUC |publisher=Macmillan |year=1992 |location=London |page=24 |isbn=9780776604695 }}</ref>

Under the reign of [[Alfred the Great|King Alfred the Great]], {{angbr|þ}} grew greatly in popularity and started to overtake {{angbr|ð}}, and did so completely by the [[Middle English]] period. {{angbr|þ}} in turn went obsolete by the [[Early Modern English]] period, mostly due to the rise of the [[printing press]],<ref name=Hill>{{cite book |title=The Routledge Handbook of the English Writing System |isbn=9780367581565 |chapter=Chapter 25: Typography and the printed English text |first=Will |last=Hill |date=30 June 2020 |chapter-url=https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/703215/1/25HillFinalDV.pdf |page=6 |quote=The types used by Caxton and his contemporaries originated in Holland and Belgium, and did not provide for the continuing use of elements of the Old English alphabet such as thorn <þ>, eth <ð>, and yogh <ʒ>. The substitution of visually similar typographic forms has led to some anomalies which persist to this day in the reprinting of archaic texts and the spelling of regional words. The widely misunderstood ‘ye’ occurs through a habit of printer’s usage that originates in Caxton’s time, when printers would substitute the <y> (often accompanied by a superscript <e>) in place of the thorn <þ> or the eth <ð>, both of which were used to denote both the voiced and non-voiced sounds, /ð/ and /θ/ (Anderson, D. (1969) The Art of Written Forms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p 169) |access-date=7 July 2022 |archive-date=10 July 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220710022857/https://arro.anglia.ac.uk/id/eprint/703215/1/25HillFinalDV.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref> and was replaced by the digraph {{angbr|th}}.