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Why was there an ‘e’ at the end of some words in the olden days? Neve, WA
A lot of the so-called fairye’s (referring to the silent ‘e’ at the end of words) that we find in Modern English were once pronounced. (Admittedly, a number of them were added later – it was one of the handy means that printers had in early times to justify lines). Somehow the ‘e’ captured the imagination of modern English speakers and it has now become an earmark of early English — so that if you want to give something an early English flavour you simply add on an extra ‘e’. It can be described as an example of ‘mock archaic’ (or ‘hyperarchaism’), the sort that you find in absurdities such as ‘Ye Olde Englishe Fishe Shoppe’. In fact, the ye here is also an error — it should be ‘The’ but the symbol which was used in early times for ‘th’ was misread in later times as ‘y’ – a sloppily written thorn looks a bit like a ‘y’ and was often misread!