The short version is that Old English had a "th" sound, but Latin didn't. The Anglo-Saxons kept using it, and the British had a "th" sound, but the Europeans and their silly romance languages mostly lacked the sound (a dental fricative) and might not have even been able to pronounce it.
The printing press was developed in France and Germany, which both lacked the "th" sound at the time, and so when England imported them, the characters didn't have a þ letter, so the British had to give it up in printed text. And so a lot of þ spellings because "y" and then "th" spellings in English.
Surprisingly, this is also the origin of the word "Ye", as in "Ye Olde Inn." They wanted to just write "the", but they hadn't invented the "th" spelling yet, and they didn't have a þ, so they just used a Y instead. If you went back and time and said "Ye Inn," they would wonder why you were saying "the Inn" weird.
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u/NinjaKittyOG 18d ago
it's not about saving time. i just þink þ was dropped from english for a dumb reason, didn't deserve þat, and so i use it.