What ꝰ means
It fills out a shortened word ending, most often Latin -us.
A brevigraph is a compact sign scribes used to shorten writing. Roman shorthand valued speed; medieval scribes also used abbreviations to save parchment and ink.
An early dated example appears in a 1509 printed edition of Virgil. That shows the sign was in use by then, not when it was invented.
Can ꝰ mean more than -us?
Yes; its value can vary with language and position.
Besides Latin -us, medieval records associate ꝰ with final -os in Latin, Portuguese, and Castilian, and with us in Norse. Later Anglo-French and Middle English records show related closed-loop signs for -us, -s, -es, or another local ending. Read the full word and compare nearby spellings before expanding it.
Its practical role is scholarly transcription: read ꝰ alongside the language and spellings around it, rather than as a general-purpose superscript.
Scholarly and historical: ꝰ belongs in transcriptions of older writing, where its expansion depends on context.
Its 9-like shape can be a digit or another abbreviation; check the word position before expanding it.
Who writes ꝰ
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Don't confuse it with
1
Related characters
1
Questions people ask
2Can ꝰ be used as a superscript?
No. ꝰ is a historical abbreviation with a specific reading; for a raised letter, number, footnote, or formula, use superscript formatting on the character you mean.
Why does ꝰ look different in fonts?
The shape varies by font, and some fonts omit specialist medieval characters. It may appear as a blank box even when the text contains ꝰ.
More like this
9
How to type or find ꝰ
- Search it as
- brevigraph · breviograph · Latin abbreviation · medieval abbreviation · superscript us · -us abbreviation · 9-shaped abbreviation
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ꝰ\A770Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.