alteration of Old English þē the¹; from the use by early printers of the letter y to represent the runic character þ in manuscripts. The runic character þ was used in English to represent the sound /th/ until the 15th cent., but in many manuscripts from the 14th cent. onwards it was increasingly represented by a character indistinguishable from y. After the runic character had fallen out of use, y continued in use as an abbreviation for th in some early printed books and in manuscript throughout the 17th cent. and probably later. Usually, however, it was written with the following character in a superior position to show that it was an abbreviation rather than a word. Ye was never pronounced /yee/ until it was revived in modern times as a largely jocular archaism, usually to suggest picturesque quaintness