From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 5 05:03:47 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E26D916A40F for ; Sun, 5 Nov 2006 05:03:47 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from igloo.linux.gr (igloo.linux.gr [62.1.205.36]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2760E43D45 for ; Sun, 5 Nov 2006 05:03:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: from kobe.laptop (host5.bedc.ondsl.gr [62.103.39.229]) (authenticated bits=128) by igloo.linux.gr (8.13.8/8.13.8/Debian-2) with ESMTP id kA553b1n016780 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NOT); Sun, 5 Nov 2006 07:03:39 +0200 Received: from kobe.laptop (kobe.laptop [127.0.0.1]) by kobe.laptop (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id kA553TLX002378; Sun, 5 Nov 2006 07:03:30 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Received: (from keramida@localhost) by kobe.laptop (8.13.8/8.13.8/Submit) id kA553SUi002377; Sun, 5 Nov 2006 07:03:28 +0200 (EET) (envelope-from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr) Date: Sun, 5 Nov 2006 07:03:28 +0200 From: Giorgos Keramidas To: Bill Moran Message-ID: <20061105050328.GF1264@kobe.laptop> References: <20061104045607.GA5653@thought.org> <20061104205321.d309c51c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20061104205321.d309c51c.wmoran@collaborativefusion.com> X-Hellug-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Hellug-MailScanner-SpamCheck: not spam, SpamAssassin (score=-2.529, required 5, AWL -0.13, BAYES_00 -2.60, DNS_FROM_RFC_ABUSE 0.20, UNPARSEABLE_RELAY 0.00) X-Hellug-MailScanner-From: keramida@ceid.upatras.gr X-Spam-Status: No Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List Subject: Re: digression: There is no "ye" X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 05:03:48 -0000 On 2006-11-04 20:53, Bill Moran wrote: > > There is no word "ye", and there never was. > > Word origins is a hobby of mine, and I found it pretty difficult to > figure out where "ye" came from, because it never existed. > > What _did_ exist, was a letter in old English called a "thorne". The > thorne looked a lot like a capital "Y" (with a horizontal line through > it) and had the sound of "th". When the thorne fell into disuse, > later readers would think sentences said "we went to Ye bar to drink > wiY friends". > > Since "the" is liable to be the most common word in the English > language, this fell into a more general belief that in olden times, > the word "ye" was used instead of "the". > > Anyway, it's a bit of non-BSD trivia. Sorry for the noise to those > who aren't interested, and sorry that I don't know enough about groff > to help fix your problem. Quite interesting trivia, nevertheless. Thanks for taking the time to write all this down :)