{{Short description|Pseudo-Early Modern English phrase}} {{Italic title}} thumb|300px|right|Anachronistic sign reading "Ye Olde Pizza Parlor" [[Image:Ye Olde Mint,1792.jpg|thumb| The first Philadelphia Mint, as it appeared around 1908]] '''''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;<ref name="gizmodo">{{cite web |last1=Davis |first1=Lauren |title="Ye Olde" Is Fake Old English (And You're Mispronouncing It Anyway) |url=https://io9.gizmodo.com/ye-olde-is-fake-old-english-and-youre-mispronouncing-1679780566 |website=Gizmodo |access-date=18 September 2019 |date=15 January 2015 |archive-date=4 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190904034815/https://io9.gizmodo.com/ye-olde-is-fake-old-english-and-youre-mispronouncing-1679780566 |url-status=live }}</ref> it continues to be used today, albeit now more frequently in an ironically anachronistic and kitsch fashion.<ref name="gizmodo" />
==History== {{See also|The#Ye form|l1=''Ye'' form of the word ''the''}} [[File:The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 18 (clip).png|thumb|"... by the grace that God put ..." (Extract from ''The Book of Margery Kempe'')]] The use of the term ''ye'' to mean "the" derives from Early Modern English, in which ''the'' was written {{code|þe}}, employing the Old English letter thorn, {{angbr|þ}}. During the Tudor period, the scribal abbreviation for {{char|þe}} was {{code|þͤ}} or {{code|þᵉ}} ; here, the letter {{angle bracket|þ}} is combined with the letter {{angle bracket|e}}.<ref>''Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary'', [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ye%5B2%5D]{{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121020032804/http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ye%5B2%5D|date=2012-10-20}}<span> ye</span>[2] retrieved February 1, 2009</ref> With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of {{angbr|y}} for {{angbr|Þ}} became ubiquitous, leading to the common ''ye'' as in "Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe". One major reason for this was that {{angbr|y}} existed in the blackletter types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while {{angbr|Þ}} did not,<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) |archive-date=10 July 2022 |access-date=7 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> resulting in 10px|class=skin-invert (yͤ) as well as y<sup>e</sup>. The connection became less obvious after the letter thorn was discontinued in favour of the digraph {{angle bracket|th}}. Today, ''ye'' is often incorrectly pronounced as the archaic pronoun of the same spelling.<ref name="gizmodo" />
==See also== *Mojibake *Olde English District *Sensational spelling
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20250520232408/http://www.english-for-students.com/Antique-English.html Antique English: Why is 'ye' used instead of 'the' in antique English?] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20240226013727/http://www.viviancook.uk/Histspellings/The%26YeHistExamples.html THE versus YE: historical data from English spelling 1450-1734] {{wiktionary}}
Category:English words and phrases