Thorn (letter)

Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English and other languages. The letter originated from the symbol ᚦ in the Elder Fuþark and was called thorn in Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian rune. Thorn looks like the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are not related. Icelandic is the only surviving language which uses the letter þ.

Thorn is pronounced like the sound of th, as in the English word thick. In some cases, it makes a sound similar to th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usually represents this sound with the letter eth instead.

The lowercase thorn character is unusual in that it has both an ascender (the tall part at the top of the character) and a descender (the part of the character below the line it is written on).