The Old English Words of the Middle English Period

Scribes came up with similar innovations to deal with the disappearing U. They often added an E after the U to ensure that there were no final U's. Words like blue, true, sue, and accrue are spelled with U-E instead of a simple U. Another solution to make the U stand out in the middle of a word was to replace it with an O. So words like love, wolf, monk, cum, tongue, and honey all got their modern O's thanks to that substitution.