Its sound closely resembles a voiceless dental fricative like "th" in the English word "thick", for example. It also may be heard as a voiced dental fricative [ð, such as the "th" in the English word "the". Seen throughout Old English writing, thorn also remained common throughout literature in the Middle English period. Throughout such a period, a handwritten form of the letter thorn was similar to the letter "y"; when composed with a small "e" above it (), it was an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word "the". Such a form may be seen within the 1611 edition of the Bible (King James Version) in Romans or in the Mayflower Compact. The letter thorn has survived to date in the form of a "Y" within pseudo-archaic passages. A well-known example of this would be "Ye olde".