Œ

Œ (minuscule: œ), known as ethel or œthel, is a Latin-script character. It is a ligature of o and e. In medieval and early modern Latin, it was used in borrowings from Greek that originally contained the diphthong οι, and in a few non-Greek words. These usages continue in English and French. In French, the words that were borrowed from Latin and contained the Latin diphthong written as œ now generally have é or è; but œ is still used in some non-learned French words, representing open-mid front rounded vowels, such as œil ('eye') and sœur ('sister').

It is used in the modern orthography for Old West Norse and is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the open-mid front rounded vowel. In English runology, ⟨œ⟩ is used to transliterate the rune othala ᛟ (Old English: ēðel, 'country, native land, home').

Languages

Latin

Classical Latin wrote the o and e separately (as has today again become the general practice), but the ligature was used by medieval and early modern writings, in part because the diphthongal sound had, by Late Latin, merged into the sound [e]. The classical diphthong had the value [oe̯], similar to (standard) English oi as in choice. It occurs most often in borrowings from Greek, rendering that language's οι (in majuscule ΟΙ), although it is also used in some native words such as coepi 'I began'.