Brewer's: X

on beer-casks indicates beer which paid ten shillings duty, and hence it came to mean beer of a given quality. Two or three crosses are mere trade-marks, intended to convey the notion of twice or thrice as strong as that which pays ten shillings duty.

X

A letter resembling “y” was the Anglo-Saxon character for th (hard); hence etc., are sometimes made to stand for the, that, this.

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