Ꝥ (minuscule: ꝥ), or Þ (thorn) with stroke was a scribal abbreviation common in the Middle Ages. It was used for Old English "þæt" (Modern English "that"), as well as Old Norse "þor-", the "-þan"/"-ðan" in síðan, "þat", "þæt", and "þess". In Old English texts, the stroke tended to be more slanted, while in Old Norse texts it was straight. In Middle English times, the ascender of the þ was reduced (making it similar to the Old English letter Wynn, ƿ), which caused the thorn with stroke abbreviation ( ) to be replaced with a thorn with a small t above the letter ( ).
Unicode encodes Ꝥ as U+A764 Ꝥ latin capital letter thorn with stroke (HTML: Ꝥ), and ꝥ at U+A765 ꝥ latin small letter thorn with stroke (HTML: ꝥ).
A thorn with a stroke on the descender also exists. The codepoints are U+A766 Ꝧ latin capital letter thorn with stroke through descender (HTML: Ꝧ), and U+A767 ꝧ latin small letter thorn with stroke through descender (HTML: ꝧ).
Famous quotes containing the words thorn and/or stroke:
“You’ve gotta tell ‘em! Soylent Green is people! We’ve got to stop them! Somehow!”
—Stanley Greenberg, U.S. screenwriter, and Richard Fleischer. Thorn (Charlton Heston)
“I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken’s wing.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)