The

The is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers.

Old English had a definite article se (in the masculine gender), sēo (feminine), and þæt (neuter).

[7] An area in which the use or non-use of the is sometimes problematic is with geographic names: Countries and territorial regions are notably mixed, most exclude "the" but there are some that adhere to secondary rules: In Middle English, the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as a þ with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a þ with a small t above it.

With the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of ⟨y⟩ for ⟨Þ⟩ became ubiquitous, leading to the common "ye", as in 'Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'.

One major reason for this was that ⟨y⟩ existed in the printer's types that William Caxton and his contemporaries imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while ⟨Þ⟩ did not.

In August 2021 Ohio State and Marc Jacobs agreed the high-end fashion retailer could use "THE" on its merchandise, which was different from what the university would sell.

In 1916, Legros & Grant included in their classic printers' handbook Typographical Printing-Surfaces, a proposal for a letter similar to Ħ to represent "Th", thus abbreviating "the" to ħe.