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Here are some examples of citations in the OED of Old English where they use a standalone crossed thorn, Ꝥ:

  • Þu aclænsast Ꝥ weofod and ʒehalʒast.
  • Þær after com swulke mon-qualm Ꝥ lute hær cwike læfden.
  • Heo unwreih þene put Ꝥ hit adronc inne.
  • Đer··Ꝥ fyr ne bið ʒidrysnad.
  • Þa sæde he [Epicurus] Ꝥ se lust wære Ꝥ hehste good.
  • Þu steorest te sea stream Ꝥ hit fleden ne mot fir þan þu markedest.
  • Eft is heofena rice ʒelic þam mangere þe sohte Ꝥ gode mere-grot.
  • Al swa þat wilde swin Ꝥ wroteð ȝeond þan grouen.
  • Swa hwa swa wille sawan westmabære land, atio ærest of ða þornas & þa fyrsas & Ꝥ fearn & ealle þa weod.

That’s the Unicode glyph of a thorn with a stroke:

‭ Þ  00DE       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN
‭ þ  00FE       LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN
        * Icelandic, Old English, phonetics
        * Runic letter borrowed into Latin script
        x (runic letter thurisaz thurs thorn - 16A6)
‭ ᚦ  16A6       RUNIC LETTER THURISAZ THURS THORN
        x (latin small letter thorn - 00FE)
‭ Ꝥ  A764       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE
‭ ꝥ  A765       LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE
‭ Ꝧ  A766       LATIN CAPITAL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER
‭ ꝧ  A767       LATIN SMALL LETTER THORN WITH STROKE THROUGH DESCENDER

It may be that it is supposed to be a small thorn with stroke not a capital one. I need a better magnifying glass. :)

If you can't see it in your browser, it looks like this:

A picture of a "thorn with stroke" character. To describe it, think of a lower case b and p combined at the open part. Now, cross the line of the b like you would cross a lower case t, only slightly inclined from lower left to upper right.

But my question is: what does it mean?

What does that mean? Is it a scribal abbreviation for the or that, or both or neither?

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    I can't see the character (not that I'd know the answer). :(
    – anongoodnurse
    Jun 20, 2014 at 3:53
  • idem! I see an empty little box. Tsk, tchrist, we've been through this before. :) I suspect @medica we need to change our browsers, I think firefox handles this type of characters well.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jun 20, 2014 at 6:34
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    @Mari-LouA - I'm on Firefox, and I can't see a crossed thorn. After looking up "crossed thorn" on Google, I think maybe it looks like this.
    – J.R.
    Jun 20, 2014 at 10:37
  • @J.R. and I'm using Chrome. Good to know we're not alone in seeing empty squares :)
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jun 20, 2014 at 10:39
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    Please note that seeing or not seeing the characters does NOT in fact depend on your browsers, but on your OS version, which determines the installed fonts.
    – kinokijuf
    Jun 20, 2014 at 12:18

4 Answers 4

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In the Old English language that was spelled þæt. It was also abbreviated as a letter Thorn, þ, with the ascender crossed, ꝥ . enter image description here

Wikipedia: That

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    Abbreviations were customarily indicated with an overbar (eg D͞mo for the Latin Domino), so the crossed thorn is the ultimate example.
    – Andrew Leach ♦
    Jun 20, 2014 at 11:14
  • @AndrewLeach Yes, although I think that cross was for the final t; notice in the article how it evolved to have a tau-like glyph above it.
    – tchrist ♦
    Jun 20, 2014 at 20:55
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According to the website http://bible-researcher.com/engchange.html, it was an abbreviation for that (I.e. thorn, ash, t - I can't get runes to work on my phone).

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A crossed thorn stood for þæt, which was the neuter singular definite article. Þe was a relative pronoun in OE, and there was little point in abbreviating it as the only alternative is either þ. or þ+ a superscript e, neither of which saves a lot of time in writing.

The words for "the" in OE were se ... seo ... þæt etc. e.g., "...þa com þær regen and bleowon windas and risan flod and hruron on þæt hus, and hit na ne feoll. Soþlice hit wæs ofer stan ge.timbrode." where "þæt hus" should be translated as "the house", and could be indicated as a crossed thorn plus hus.

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I stumbled on this on r/etymology -

enter image description here

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  • It has many mistakes.
    – tchrist ♦
    Jul 19, 2019 at 2:20

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