Thenne

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. Used in older English to mean at that particular time or afterward, placing one event after another ; used to mean in that case or as a result of what has been stated
2. An archaic adverb meaning at that moment or subsequently, marking the order of events ; an archaic adverb meaning therefore or under those circumstances, marking a consequence
3. Old-fashioned spelling of an adverb indicating a point in time or the next step in a sequence ; the same spelling also signalling a conclusion or the result of a condition

Etymology: "Thenne" is a Middle English spelling of "then," the adverb meaning "at that time." It is a variant that kept a final "-e" which the standard "then" later dropped. Middle English spelling was not fixed, and scribes wrote the same word many ways, so "thenne" and "then" were simply two forms of one word rather than two different words. The word itself is inherited from Old English "þanne," which meant both "at that time" and "than" in comparisons, a double use that Modern English has since split between "then" and "than." The "-e" in "thenne" came from the Middle English habit of adding a final "e" to many words, a letter that was often pronounced in Chaucer's time but later fell silent. Many of the "-e" spellings you see in Middle English texts were ultimately dropped, leaving the modern spelling.