Marco Cimarosti:

> The sign was in a word looking like "8ρων" ("8rôn") and which, according to
> the text, corresponds to Latin "urina". If I understand correctly, the text
> also says that this sign is a diphthong which in Doric was substituted by a
> plain "ω" (omega): "Nam olem a Graecis per <8> diphthongum scribebatur, quae
> Dorice in ω solet commutari".

Well, "ούρων" is the genitive of "ούρα", meaning "urine", so this is
probably the word. I don't know anything about Doric Greek, though, so I
can't say anything about the relation of "ου" and "ω"...

John Hudson:

> This ligature is one of the few that survived the extended period of
> ligature-rich cursive Greek typography that began in the late 15th century
> and withered in the mid-18th century. It and the so called 'stigma'
> ligature (sigma tau) continued into modern usage and may still be
> encountered in Greek handwriting and some polytonic typography, although
> generally not in monotonic setting.

Some people use the omicron-upsilon ligature in handwriting even for
monotonic text. It's also used sometimes for shop signs, titles, etc.

The sigma-tau ligature isn't used by anybody today in "normal" writing,
I think, although it's used sometimes as a numeral, and *maybe* in
Byzantine music books (I haven't seen any modern Byzantine music books,
but my father has some from the 1950's where I think I've seen it).


Alexandros