~ 1
■ pronoun [ second person plural ] archaic or dialect plural form of thou 1 .
Origin
OE gē , of Gmc origin.
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~ 2
■ determiner pseudo-archaic term for the .
Word History
The modern use of ~ has arisen from a misunderstanding. In Old English the sound th- was represented by a letter called the thorn , written þ. In medieval times this character came to be written identically with y , so that the could be written ~ . This spelling was kept as a convenient abbreviation as late as the 19th century, but it was never pronounced as ‘~’.