From: utzoo!henry Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: Ye == The Article-I.D.: utzoo.2326 Posted: Sun Aug 1 02:32:15 1982 Received: Sun Aug 1 02:32:15 1982 According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the use of "ye" for "the" was a consequence of printers using a "y" as the closest approximation to the obsolete "thorn" character (roughly, a vertical stroke with a semicircular loop on the right side), whose sound was that of modern unvoiced "th".