When did ae become [e]?

1. When did æ stop being used?
2. Where did æ originate from?
3. What did the Old English ligature æ change into?
4. What is the difference between æ and œ?

When did æ stop being used?

The Old English “æ” was not a diphthong. It represented the sound of “a simple vowel, intermediate between a and e,” the OED says. This symbol died out by about 1300, when it was replaced in new spellings by “a,” “e,” or “ee.”

Where did æ originate from?

As a letter of the Old English Latin alphabet, it was called æsc, "ash tree", after the Anglo-Saxon futhorc rune ᚫ which it transliterated; its traditional name in English is still ash, or æsh if the ligature is included.

What did the Old English ligature æ change into?

Æ ( lowercase æ) is a letter in both the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Called ash in English, it was originally a ligature of the Latin characters a and e. It later on became an individual letter used commonly in Germanic languages including the modern Scandinavian languages.

What is the difference between æ and œ?

In italics, the œ ligature is usually rounder at the top, while the 'a' of æ is more teardrop-shaped. The æ may also have a little bump sticking up in the middle showing the vertical line of the a.