Wow…I didn’t know that LOL

ampersand? hmm.. weird. :l

HEYYYYYY THATS SOOOOOO COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!

AND PER SE AND!

grrrrrrrrr

Shouldn’t that be “…every day?”?

I’m interested in the symbols that are combined letters — rather like the ampersand but still recognizable in themselves: things such as the combined “ae” in “encyclopædia” and the “oe” in “fœtor.”

Interesting fact to know…! Would love to know more of such interesting facts.

I agree with Jon!

How swell that is!How about you tell us about œ & æ?

LOL alysha, jons one big nerd

You fixed it! I’m so proud….

Gabbana, not Gabana. Come on, you’re the dictionary! I work as a copy editor, and you gotta check your proper nouns!

It is great to learn new things. This was very interesting to me. I wonder if my kids know? Usually when I tell them some bit of info, they look at me and sigh. “I know mom”. LOL

i agree with Jon as well. the origins of these combined letters is interesting.

Really good to know, fun to learn new things everyday. Good times.

Cool story.
I want to hear about the rise and fall of the ‘¢’ symbol.

When I was a kid, my dad told me that the dollar sign “$” was originally created to symbolize the ‘United States’ by using/combining the letters “U” and “S”.

First, I have to emphasize how sometimes the ‘dollar sign’ is written/transcribed with 2 lines that are parallel and close to one another going down its center, whereas the above typed keyboard version only has 1.

Anyway, if you write the letter “U” (skinny-like / with its vertical lines fairly close together) and then you write the letter “S” over it – and if you then take into account how over time people may have just stopped including the ‘curve’ part on the bottom of the letter “U” (which is easily conceivable for a multitude of reasons: unenlightenment to the actual original shape or meaning of the sign/character, simple laziness, ect.) – it seems as though it could be true.

Your blog brought about this memory for me, so I was wondering if you and others thought it was also interesting and maybe I could then get my answer through ‘the hot word’…

Thank You

Oh… And…

I definitely agree with Jon’s comment (9/2/11 2:09pm) too –

What the !%$! is up with those letters like in the word “encyclopædia”???

Thank You again

I’m just going to use this word to impress my mom into buying me an ipod (unfortunately my langauge arts grade isn’t very high, but its getting better!)

Thanks for the fun knowledge!

Well can’t we just add “&” back to the alphabet as “XY&Z”?

A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P,
Q-R-S, T-U-V, W, X, Y-Z- &
Now I know these ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me
XD

Thats really interesting!! haha and per se and!

When I was young we used to say the vowels as A, E, I, O, U, &(nice use of today’s word huh!) sometimes Y and W. I get the Y but “W”??? If not this then I agree on Joined letters with Jon and Alysha. And how do you know when to use them and how to pronounce them when spelling.

it’s “Dolce & Gabbana” with 2 B’s not Gabana. Dictionary.com should do some spell check.

Wow! I am to tell this to my friends… So that they view me as super smart. Lol!

That’s amazing! I love it!

I would love to learn about this little guy here: ~

I honestly have no idea what the name for it is or what it’s officially supposed to be used for. I always just called it a “squiggly.”

I agree with Chika. Squiggly? I call it a Wavy… Sometimes a Coof…

Chika, it’s called a tilde – but I have no idea why.

Awesome post. &c was the really interesting part, as a stand-in for etc.

Come to think of it, what is ‘etcetera’ all about? I should look it up…

wow!that was just awesome i was not even thought that in my most weird dream!
love to visit dic…..com!
lolx!

I agree that is interestint, however I always thought that the “@” was the ampersand. So wthat is “@” called?

That is new to me. What a long history such a word has! Fantastic!!

That was really interesting. I’ve always wondered where & came from but never got around to looking it up! No need now.

Origin of the $ or # or @ or ! or ?

wow i didnt knew it thanx 2 dictionary .com!!!!!!!!!!!1

COOOOOOOOLLLLL….

& has a great history. There are over thousand alphabets in china, while our 27 th alphabet wins the linguistic race

wow….cool, i think thats one thing we should know from the past…

don’t know &

Words are sexy.

Huh. So “ampersand” is slurred “and per se and”? How long do you think it will be until “LMNOP” becomes one character, “Ellamenopee?” I remember when I first learned the alphabet and I was SO sure that it was only one letter. LOL

that was interesting

And per se and. That is weird.

I agree with jon im kinda confused `bout the a&e stuck together or the o&e
no 1 really explained it to me but hope u can help me out and hey jon isnt nerd!!

Very informative and will share with my English class.

Ethan, the reason you used to say “sometimes Y and W” is because W is what linguists call a semivowel. Try to pronounce a “W” sound very slowly and it kind of sounds like “oooooooo-uh” or something. In Italian, there is no Y or W, so the letter I is sometimes used to make a Y sound (as in “spiacente”) and U is sometimes used to make a W sound (as in “scuola”).

Very cool – thanks. I had an international technology instructor ask me once about the symbol “@”. We refer to it as the “at” symbol, but he would ask his students if they knew of another name for it. One of his northern European students referred to it as a “schnabel A”, with the “schnabel” being the word for what an elephant has on its face – its trunck. Wonder if there is another name for the “@” symbol.

@Ethan – Some times Y and **W**?? what the heck? I have NEVER heard W as a part time vowel! :O

This was a very fun and interesting article! I love etymology!

Dictionary.com…………………what about @

A lot of English words or symbols have interesting histories.

It was fun reading this. Can’t wait for more articles on this site .

Quite interesting indeed! I enjoyed reading every bit of info on this page.

I am wondering what is the origin of “et al.” is

wonderful…… to know…. about “and per se and”………..

w, x, y, z, and ampersand

Is the ae in “encyclopædia (as well as the “œ”) a diphthong, which are two vowels combined to form one sound? I am not sure, just me thinking. I should have paid more attention in class!
H Michael

so cool

@Evan

et cetera, like most abbreviations we use (e.g., i.e., etc.) is a Latin phrase. “et,” as this article pointed out, means “and,” and “cetera” means “the rest.” Therefore, et cetera means “and the rest.”

Another character/letter that is no longer in the alphabet, in addition to the thorn, is the yogh. The thorn looks like a lower case p with the line extended above the loop, not like a “y” as the linked article on “the extinction…” suggests. Also, “Ye Olde Bookshoppe,” and names like that, contrary to what the linked article suggests, is a mistake. When people wrote the thorn incorrectly, it looked like a “y.” Thus, it’s simply “The Old Bookshop,” because the thorn was essentially one character for the sound we now use “th” to represent.

Also, the reason “w” could be said to be a vowel is because, in Middle English, you pronounced every letter, and sometimes “w” was somewhat like a vowel. As for the “wynn” mentioned in the linked article, there were now double-character vowel sounds in Middle English: “oo” for example. You pronounced both “o”s independently, but that eventually slurred into the way we now pronounce “oo”s.

These dictionary.com articles quite oversimplify the progressions associated with how words and characters have changed and sometimes even have glaring mistakes. Always verify these accounts with other sources.

Also, a tilde is the name of the character above the Spanish “n” that gives an almost “y” sound to the character. I think that if someone calls the ~ a tilde, they’re using the term incorrectly. I’m not sure why most people use ~, but it can mean “approximately” in math, especially with two on top of each other like a curvy equal-to sign.

The character & is called amperesand because it was used (and popularized) by the French physicist Andre Ampere (for whom the unit of electrical current is also named).

omg thats soooooo intresting i didnt know that!! lol

Chika, as Evan said it’s called a tilde – pronounced “till-deh” and it means “approximately.” It’s typical use is similar to the equal sign “=” although it can be used for other purposes, as well.

An example might be: 1.929327 + 2.10003 ~ 4

god! come on, alysha “&” emily, jon IS A NERDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD (like moi)

Wowie, wowie, wow!

That name’s really bizarre!

wow u guys are such nerds…who cares about the history of &

THANK YOU so much for this information. I have been a fan of the shape of the ampersand and have loved it’s name. So, thank you for sharing this.

I would love to learn more about how the origins of the period, comma, question mark, and exclamation point! Those are four request, but I thought I’d put them out there, anyway.

Thanks, again. Fascinating!

Yaar, why does it just have to change???

Actually, “&c.” means, “and so forth.”

[...] Amper Sand Et Cetra after Cetra had her lunch. — Filling and it tastes good too, with ZZZZZZs all in a bunch. — ‘In your dreams,’ said Cetra. — We wouldn’t have it any Other Way. — & come to think of it simplistic like — Wees got nothing much to say. –>>L.T.Rhyme [...]

@Lars “Ampere sand” lol you crack me up…

I recently read of someone who called it “and per cent” because “it’s like a per cent sign, but it means ‘and’…”

Wikipedia has a good write-up on the dipthongs/ligatures and missing letters from Old English on their page for English Language.

The oe and ae ligatures come from Greek and latin where they either used them as we see them in the modern English or where they had a letter we do not have. So oe for example sometimes represents Greek omega or big-o. Ae was pronounced igh in Latin (rhymes with high). It appears in words like Caesar. This was originally pronounced kigh-ser, hence the German emperor, the kaiser, in the 1800s. Also why the Russians had a tsar or czar as their king.

As for w being a semivowel, Britons don’t find thus strange, since the welsh language uses w as “oo”. Hence cwm, a kind of hill, is pronounced koom.

I hate the ampersand. Its just a combination of the ‘a’ sound the ‘n’ sound & the ‘d’ sound.

What a fantastically selected piece of information. I enjoyed the research you chose to include in the article. Your opener made it relevant and catching. Well done. Thoughtful article.

-Tatiana

I’ve learned something new! Thank you. I’d just like to add, somewhat related, that I think Americans use Zee instead of Zed because Zed doesn’t rhyme with Vee. I have no proof; just sayin’.

I would have never theorized that.

______

All those unusual archaic combinations of vowels you find in old and middle English/German oe ae. etc. are what is called “ablaut”

Think of the six vowels as slight variations of one sound or one vowel. The sounds the open mouth makes. Each language has a slight difference in their pronunciation. Before spelling became standardized, they weren’t always clear how to indicate the subtle distinctions.

Ablaut is the evolution over time of that one vowel’s subtle variations, simplified into six distinctly separate independent sounds/letters A E I O U

Ablaut Is the English evolution of the vowel into 6 separate distinctions to do what the Umlaut still does by way of additional variation in Germanic languages

Ablaut is the evolution of Umlaut they are the same thing more or less

Betcha didn’t know that. Huh?

LMNOP, my dear dear dear dear Watson…. LMNOP!

And: why is @ used for “at”? I always thought it looked like around (a-round).

And therefore it is twentyseventh star of the ancient astrology
,astronomy and what not for in the ancient hindu religeon there are 27 distinct star of birth prescribed as per birth time & therefore is the last star of the alphabet it is my opinion only.

What about the squiggly?! Or whatever it’s called. This thing; ~

The nerve! The gall! The chutzpah! The overweening ego! No matter how many times I see it, it still just astounds me.

I thought that the purpose of coming to a dictionary site, was to have the dictionary tell us the meanings and histories of words, not for us to tell the dictionary, and others. Lars has many compatriots; these threads are riddled with them. Dictionary.com spent a hundred hours and a couple of thousand dollars to research this item, but Lars knows better. The site says that the term Ms has been in use since the early 1600s, but I didn’t hear it till Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan found it and popularized it in the ’60s, so I “know” that they invented it then. My mind(?) is made up. Don’t confuse me with the truth.

That was cool and interesting. I wish & was still apart of the alphabet so I could slack off more!

If it was slurred into ampersand, then how come there is no ampersand in the alphabet?

Who in removed such a great and mighty letter?

Font = Type Face + Style + Size

Arial is a type face. Italic is a style. 10 is a size. Arial Italic 10 is a font.

We have different words because they have different meanings.

So that explains the & shape, what about writing it as a 3 reflected across a vertical axis with a vertical line through the middle? Is that the same origin just a variant?

Every day is a school day and this is my piece of learning for today! Thanks!

One Ton Tomato …… Guantanamera

And per se, so when I write rum&coke actually it should rum and per se coke (kidding).
Check out S.Nob, or snob, it comes from Oxford where classrooms were separated by a golden fence, with nobility ahead of the fence and those who could afford the tuition behind it, when signing in if you were not a member of the nobility, they would write S. for sine and Nob. for nobilitate.
I learned something here so I gave something, so I can feel even.

What a confusion!!!

“the word ampersand by more than 1,500 years.”?
while English itself hardly has la little more than a thousand?
and a modern English much less?

Here is Old English alphabet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Latin_alphabet

Example of English word “legally”:
ǣwlīċ
http://www.thefullwiki.org/%C7%BDwl%C3%ADce

There are many letters removed from alphabet but still used

For example,
formulæ
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/formul%C3%A6

Chika, ~ is a tilda.

They probably had to get rid of the ampersand so the alphabet song rhymes.

[...] I couldn’t resist writing about it. Over at the hot word (on Dictionary.com) they ask, “What character was removed from the alphabet but is still used every day?” The answer, of course, is the [...]

Evan: It’s called a tilde and it’s used in Spanish to enunciate stress on the letter ‘n’ in most cases. It makes the ‘en-YAY’ sound when placed over the letter itself.

Hope that helped. (:

Fern – ordering a Rum and per se Coke is ordering a Rum and by itself Coke. That is a shot and a chaser and it is no longer a mixed drink.

ill heard of it already

A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K-L I said
M-N-O-P-Q-R-S, T-U-V-W, for wed
X and Y and finally Z
I’m exhausted, time for bed.

a b c d e f g h i j kl m n o p q r s t u v w&

Mark,

You’ve told us of the ’schnabel’ A — I find that Schnabel in German means beak, mouth. No reference to elephants.

In Polish they call this thing ‘małpa’ (that’s an L with a slash through it, pronounced like our w), which means monkey. No idea why.

As Me tells us, oe and ae are from Greek and Latin (respectively). Old English used to have a vowel whose name was pronounced like our ‘ash.’ This was ae (glued together) and was used for the sound in ‘had.’ It appears in the first word of “Beowulf”:
“Hwæt, Wē Gārdena in gārdagum ….”

I don’t know if the OE version is linked to the Latin at all.

Oops … misspelling: not gārdagum but gēardagum: days of yore.

The ‘dagum’ part is ‘of days.’

‘gēar’ is read ‘yar,’ close to our ‘year,’ which is what it means.

I love learning little tid-bits of info like this!! Word origins, arcane words &c.

I learned it as “anpersand” since it matches up with the “and” in and per se and. Was it always “ampersand” or did it change?

I love knowing about the etymology of words. ´Ampersand´ was unknown to me. It is called ´et´ in Spanish.
Have you already dealt with ´lemniscata´?
Thanks,
mr

my dog will be named ampersand.

I always thought it was called And-for-stand ’till my nephew informed me otherwise

I thought that the kids included it in the alphabet before the letter “z”

That way they would sing, “w, x, y, &, z”.
Doh.

The ampersand was never part of the alphabet, regardless of what this article says. It is an abbreviation, not a letter.

@Evan Oh… Thanks for that!

@Mike @ means “at” for example, example555@(at)hotmail.com make sense?

@eyeofdali no one knows, only the people that made it up knows why…

@ evan – et cetera is latin for and so on

The umlaut is the evolution of the diæresis (you see what I did there…), which has been in use for thousands of years in the languages that we now collectively call Greek.The notion of ancient Greek as a unified singular language is somewhat misleading as spellings, pronunciations and grammatical constructs could vary considerably from city-state to city-state. Our entire modern concept of “ancient Greece” is built on a foundation of sand, as the peoples of that region at such a time did not self-identify as Greeks or Hellenes, but rather as Ionians, Spartans, Athenians etc… The diæresis indicates the absence of a dipthong.

& don’t forget ….. @ ie 3 apples @ 15c each…..

Chika, ~ is also used in Portuguese to give the vowels a (ã) and o (õ) a nasal sound in words like avião (airplane), mãe (mother), and opiniões (opinions).

Dictionary on line is a standard dictionary. While writing remarks I suppose words like LOL, HEYYYYYY, SOOOOOO do not appear to be compatible with the high standard of the Dictionary on line. Looks very cheap.

I’ve asked many people to sing the alphabet and no one has ever sung it quite like me. I have no idea as to where I learned to sing it so unique other than to say that I learned it at Juliet Morris Elementary School in Cypress, California. Everyone sings it like this:

A B C D E F G…H I J K L M N O P…Q R S T U V…W X Y and Z. Now I know my ABC’s…won’t you come and play with me?

I sing mine the same for a bit and then it goes off much differently:

A B C D E F G…H I J K L M N…O P Q…R S T…U V W X Y Z. Now I never will forget…how to say my alphabet!

If you’d care to comment, please write to: theepolishprince@yahoo.com

I bet it like 9 letters removed from the alpahbet

& could u please throw some lights on – ‘@’ & ‘?’ & well…thats it!!

1st of all, “Nev” is not my real name. 2nd of all, i am only in 5th grade, so i dont want to read it. 3rd of all……………………. wow! thats interesting!

4th of all, i dont get it

AT ALL!!!!

So many mysteries to our language….

Who knows the one sentence that has every single letter of the alphabet in it(at least once)??????? I DO !!! scroll down to see

“THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG”. (35 letters)

“” PACK MY BOX WITH FIVE DOZEN LIQUOR JUGS” is another sentence (32 letters)

i read a book and it had a school newspaper called “the ampersand” thats so weird
p.s the book was called “geek high”

Wow! That’s actually very interesting! Now I can trick my friends into thinking I’m pretty clever ;D

amberlamps

really enlightening

The history of the word “ak” is quite interesting,and in particular how the ampersand symbol/word was arrived at.Thanks for sharing:~)

info on the pound sign, aka as the hashtag nowadays for twitter-folk please

Whoa… who would’ve known!

I can never recite the alphabet without singing it.

I like to say the alphabet like this, pronounced as a single word:

“Ahbkahdefguhijjkuhlimminoppkwerstuvwicksehs”

haha come on!! everybody should of known this… seriously!

One really needs to provide references, especially for something as blatantly … umm… creative as this misconception! To pass off as fact something so easily proven false… well, my opinion of dictionary.com just dropped several notches. I’m left with only Mark Twain’s wisdom as comfort: “A good storyteller is one who has a good memory… and hopes other people haven’t.”

Why dont they use it now cause it is a cOOl word

Ha, I feel so smart! A while ago, when a saw the ampersand on a sign, I noticed it looked exactly like “Et” (it had to do with the specific font as well). Having learned Latin, I understood the connection. But I never knew how the word came about! Thanks for sharing your wisdom, it’s very interesting!

…X,Y,Z,and.
Use “and” as a letter in a word?

I agree with Lawman.

So now kids say “…W,X, Y, and Z” without even realizing it!! Success!

& tu Brute? I just had to type that

etc stands for et cetera, which is latin for something like, “and other”. So &c makes sense.

Interesting information, but as said previously it should be backed up with some references.

man you all are way behind the times… I was telling my daughter a password to an email account the other day and told her it is yadda yadda yadda…ampersand…yadda yadda yadda. I can’t believe some of you say “I’ve never heard this word before.” or “oh, I didn’t know it was called that.” Certainly, I didn’t know why it was called ampersand but I did know that & was known as ampersand. I swear the level of instruction in the schools nowadays is sooooo substandard. Yikes, what is this country (world) coming to? I live in Utah and the other day, I was at KFC and the girl that took my order asked me, “Can I get a name for your order?” She didn’t say, “Can I get YOUR name.” she said “a name.” So I said, “Uh, yeah, Caesar Chavez.” (I’m female) She looked at me kinda strange. So I asked her, “Do you know who that is?” and she said, “No.” So, I said, “Well, maybe you should have listened better in History class because if it wasn’t for him you may not have been able to get a job here. Maybe tonight when you’re online you should google him.” (She is of hispanic origin) She was mighty perplexed I tell you. I wasn’t picking on her and I am not racist. I just think that children these days do not put a very high value on their education (or heritage for that matter). SAD SAD SAD

So who tagged the image ‘Amerpsand’?

when i was in school i learned with the name of clave mussical and it is at the begining of the pentagram.which is the clave mussical composed by the clave mussical five lines and four spaces.
thank you.

Nobeliever: This is not a theory that can be proven false by any means. It was clearly found on ancient transcriptions, look at the Adobe REFERENCE.

I think that this is a pretty cool article. I honestly didn’t know that & was part of the alphabet ever. Cool to learn new things!

Who Da Thunk It ???

This is interesting… I had read in an etymology book that it was a combination of the word “and” and André-Marie Ampère’s last name (French physicist and mathematician who discovered electromagnetism and the SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere).
My understanding is that he used the letter so much, it became “Ampere’s and” and as you spoke, it changed to “ampersand.”
Both, very valid stories that you can use to enlighten your friends or simple spark up a conversation

Et ceteri in latin means ‘and the others’ not ‘and so on’

Get your facts straight.

That was some cool info!!!!!!!!

A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z, and per si &!!!!
Now i know per si and (&) next time why don’t you sing with me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bayyyyyybeeeee

Balderdash !?

Same here

i knew that

WHOA COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!! Didnt know that….

This is good stuff; I enjoy reading the history of the &!!!

i think itz kewl dat that uze 2 b a ltr u no wat they say u lern somthin new evryday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! now im gona tell my mom bout diz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, dictionary.com spelled Gabbana wrong. Amazing what you can find when you focus on simple things like Gabbana which people don’t usually value, but it’s a proper noun so obviously this shows that many people are just too ignorant and stubborn to notice such things like grammatical errors…

lol my dads romanian and says it like this (pronouncing) ah b ck d e f…ect. he sais it so faast! lol

Wow. cool!

&3&

YAY! emote with the ampersand letter!

awesome!!!

;P

and per se and, ampersand
wow english speakers are so creative. In my language (spanish), & is called et.

Shut up Bob that was great news, thanks dictionary.com

X, Y, Z, AND AMPERSAND?!?!?!? ;D

cool

nvr knew that until now ! great info!!!

the cent symbol

No comment

That is crazy…can’t we just add it back into the alphabet? I think that would be kind of cool to have it back in there…but that’s just me.

I agree with Laura (September 5th, 2011 at 2:33 pm. It’s kinda funny how I always end up singing it, even if I go super fast!

HAHAHAHA MOOT UR SO FUNNY

Can you guys stop posting these i cant do my homework with the distractions

Could you perhaps discover and explain the origin of the pilcrow sign? (¶)

It might also be nice to explain diaereses as well; as in Zoë, or naïve.

someone ask for another name for @ the one i know is that is also call arrova which is part of the measurement of pesantes or weight so @ means 25 pounds so one hundred pounds equals 4@.
thanks.

Ha, @Carlitos, you stole that from Big Bird!!!

woah! @MpEr$@nD!
=
@mPeR & $@nD!!

~ is called a tilda.

ampersand….. sound coolio…. does any one know the origin of using (sic) or . . . . in wiritng a report???

I love it! Is it strange that i spend more time on dictionary.com than I do on Facebook?

I never knew that there was so many things behind just one letter…. crazy isn’t it?

what about the elongated s that you sometimes see in old texts? when and why did that get used?

I real agree on this passage I’m a 89 year old man so I know all about this

ABCD sheep?
LMNO sheep~
MR rocks!

Oh, how I love to learn, and today I learned something very interesting. Thanks for today’s lesson!

I agree with Jon and Alysha. The combined letters confuse me senseless.

listen, i like he simple way that Dictionary.com presents their info… it’s a lot easyer to understand then the crap you shoot out of your mouth! and another thing, stop calling Jon a nerd. i think he was absolutly correct!

Thats so cool!!!! i would love to learn about more weird things.no offense.

Very interesting. I honestly had no knowledge of this. I agree with the whole combined letters confusion as well. What’s up with that?

wow i found this while doing some homework
i already knew this
what i wanna know is what my spelling words are for this week cause i didnt get them all down
anyone in Mr. Christen Hamm’s 6th grade ADV. LA?
anyone?

Thats incredible!

SOOOOO MANY NERRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDS AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

i agree with CHANDA, why can’t we just put the & sign back in the alphabet?

that is so awsome i literly use it every day HAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So is that why when I was in kindergarten learning the alphabet we’d alway argue about if it was X,Y, and, Z or if it was X,Y,Z?? (I’m 12 BTW, thats why I can remember this…Haha)

OMG that was very interesting! I never knew and now I feel my life is complete!

WOW! THAT IS AWESOME ! so unexpected! great to know!!!!

I didn’t know that! It was so interesting! I’m going to share it with everyone!

&&&&&&&&

Jennifer, interesting about the $ sign. I have always used just the one line, who knew I was doing it right!!

woah! nice one!

for the very long time i’ve known the symbol and how it’s called, the origin of its name and the fact that it is once a part of the alphabet is a very interesting revelation to me.

geez… anyway, learn something new everyday…

interesting! i love it!!!

I woulve never none…..kool!!!

you can also see the origin in the font: Monotype Corsiva

Again the Romans! we owe them much more than we are willing to admit

so you gave that working girl what she deserved, well done! languagecommand you’re so brave

The change from two lines through the S to one in the $ reflects the reduction in values of the dollar.

TIlde or tilda… well, it had to be called something. Besides, it looks like it’s waltzing a bit. )

knowin stuff is so awesome

Please explain: Why is the letter “W” called “double-u” and not “double-v” as it REALLY appears to be?

Check this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/Ampersand_Evolution.svg/500px-Ampersand_Evolution.svg.png

SO COOL! I keep forgetting what that frigging name is. AMPERSAND!!!!!

@Jennifer Encyclopaedia is the more correct way of writing ‘encyclopedia’, still in use in Britain. The entire word is Greek and the paed- comes from παιδ- in παιδεία and it means ‘education’. En- indicates ‘in’ and cyclo- indicates ‘circle’; i.e. well-rounded. So it means well-rounded education.

Now, as regards the ae placed together as one letter, this is the way it was spelled in Latin, taken directly from Greek and also used in Old English.

@ Rick

There was an article here a couple of months ago, about the decline and possible death of cursive handwriting in the techno-youth, because of texting, IMing etc. If you go back to handwriting, as it REALLY was for millenia, you’ll find that it looks like a double U. The shape of the letter changed to make it easier for engravers and printing-letter moulders. Look at pictures of old Roman inscriptions. Names like Claudius became Clavdivs. The spelling and pronunciation of the entire French language migrated because French engravers couldn’t carve out the double-curved S, and substituted the accented E.

Rick-
Good question! I think it’s from a typo

@ lpuis paiz

Spanish clave = French and English clef = musical “key”

The symbol for a “treble clef” looks very much like the ampersand, only backwards, mirror-image, and standing straight up, not leaned over. They are not the same thing.

awesome article, never new that.
I am only writing this to add to this page. It is filled to the brim with comments

many thanks for increasing knowledge.

the word is awesome

What a great article! Wow!

Hey languagecommand – you used the wrong word in the following sentence: “Well, maybe you should have listened better in History class because if it wasn’t for him you may not have been able to get a job here.” The correct word is “might” not may: “you might not have been able to get a job.” It seems as if the number of people who understand the difference between, and correct use of, “may” and “might” is dwindling fast. “May” is correct when the occasion or circumstance is in the future, i.e., “I may stay home tonight” or “If that happens, you may not be able to go.” But the past conditional (“If that had happened,…”) requires the use of “might” (you might not have gone).

@ Jennifer, September 2nd:

I don’t know about the American Dollar, but the former Portuguese currency (before the Euro) was the Escudo and it’s symbol was the S crossed by two vertical bars. That symbol is called a “cifrão”.

thats kinda cool

cOoOooOLLL!!.. learning’s real fun.. *^_^*

Wow! This is an eye-opener. Thanks, dictionary.com for these extras

I love the ampersand, I think I’ll change my name to &. I can pronounce my name as “Ampy”. My last name can be a reverse ampersand. It will look sort of like a scribed S.

wowwwwwwww i didn’t know that!!!!!!!!!!

Rick, I think the letter W looking like two Vs instead of Us is at least partly due to computing – I’d imagine it looks smoother that way as a text character. However, in old writing long before computing or even typewriting there are no doubt similar, “pointy” Ws, though that could be a matter of calligraphy.

This is my first time seeing the community at dictionary.com and I’m genuinely shocked at the writing ability of the those commenting. Surely a literary website would be the best example of it on the internet?

If ampersand had been a character in the alphabet, what sound did it denote? What words was it ever part of?

I love learning sinple things like this!

Amp-
Please do! Ampersand is so cool! But I keep forgetting the name…

I agree with Dee! Where did the ampersand fit in with the rest of the alphabet?

where is the ampersands place in the alphabet?

Sorry Juliet. All I can say is, pay attention in class next time.

@ SalManz

After defending Dictionary.com for their research, I feel badly for putting down your unnamed etymology book. I feel strongly though, that they were merely reporting the usages which people claimed, but could not prove, as valid.

Firstly, book or no book, the horse goes firmly in front of the cart. The word/symbol, ampersand, existed long before the birth of Ampere.
Secondly, Ampere was a Frenchman who had no “and”, he had an “et” in the French language which he used.
Thirdly, other than two references here, I can find no historical citation for either his heavy use of the symbol or any of his contemporaries using the term.

This appears to be a case of people trying to make sense of an esoteric item which they didn’t really understand. The new British term “chav” is not an acronym meaning Council Housed And Violent. It’s merely a term used by Romanian immigrants, meaning “young man.” The brassiere was not invented by a German guy named Otto Titslinger. I wait to be corrected by German-speaking scholars, but my research indicates that the name Titslinger does not and can not exist in German. Even if it did, by German rules of language, it would be spelled Titzlinger, it would be pronounced Titz-linger, and it would not have the Beevis and Butthead connotation so often applied.

Grammer Girl you gave languagecommand a lesson, she might start being a little more humble from now on, and you reinforced my knowledge of the use of may and might. Killed two birds with one stone

A couple months ago I took my 14-year old nephew out for his first-ever round of golf. On the 6th hole he found a ball and I asked what brand it was. He looked at it and as he handed it to me with an outstretched arm, said, “Titend” in a very questioning tone. I responded by saying that there is no ball or brand called “Titend”. I looked at the ball myself to see the most popular name on a golf ball today, “Titleist”.

When I asked, “Where did you get Titend”, he replied, “I was just guessing . They don’t teach cursive in school anymore.”

I found myself STUNNED and deeply saddened for my recent 8th grade graduate nephew – - though no fault of his own.

This is awesome. This is how I’m going to say the alphabet when possible.

Holy macadamia nuts, I didn’t know that.