Ye Olde is a pseudo-Early Modern English

Early Modern English

Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...

  stock prefix, used anachronistically

Anachronism

An anachronism—from the Greek ανά and χρόνος — is an inconsistency in some chronological arrangement, especially a chronological misplacing of persons, events, objects, or customs in regard to each other...

, suggestive of a Deep England feel.

A typical example would be Ye Olde English Pubbe or similar names of theme pubs.

The use of the term "ye" to "the" is based in the Early Modern English (Tudor

Tudor dynasty

The Tudor dynasty or House of Tudor was a European royal house of Welsh origin that ruled the Kingdom of England and its realms, including the Lordship of Ireland, later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1485 until 1603. Its first monarch was Henry Tudor, a descendant through his mother of a legitimised...

 period) scribal abbreviation

Scribal abbreviation

Scribal abbreviations are the abbreviations used by ancient and mediæval scribes writing in Latin and, later, in Greek and Old Norse...

  ("þͤ" with modern symbols), the letter thorn (þ) with a combining

Combining character

In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks ....

 e. Because thorn and Y look very nearly identical in medieval English blackletter

Blackletter

Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes...

, the two were frequently substituted for each other. The connection became less obvious after the thorn letter was discontinued in favor of the digraph

Digraph (orthography)

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...

th in the English language (resulting from the use of printing presses from France which lacked a way to print thorn).

External links

• GoodWords.com, Ye Olde English Sayings
• Englandinn.com, Ye Olde England Inn, a mock-Tudor hotel complete with references to Dickens and warm beer.
• Askoxford.com, Oxford Dictionary's FAQ: Why is 'ye' used instead of 'the' in antique English?