Re: CHAT: Ampersands
| From: | John Cowan <jcowan@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, January 22, 2003, 14:37 |
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Pavel Iosad scripsit:
> Funny you should mention it. Lately, I've been catching myself using 7
> instead of 'and' - it is a sign used for 'and' by Irish, Anglo-Saxon and
> early Welsh scribes.
The Tironian "et" is still used in writing Irish in preference to "&";
Irish-language typewriters often have a key for it.
> ObLang: is it true that the word 'ampersand' is a corruption of _'and'
> per se_?
Almost. It's a corruption of "and per se and". In reciting the English
alphabet, one used to say "t, u, v, w, x, y, z, and per se [by itself] &".
In the list of silly names used by the INTERCAL programming language
(INTERCAL obviously stands for "Computer Language With No Pronounceable
Acronym"), such as "spark" for apostrophe and "rabbit ears" for double
quote, the name "ampersand" is considered sufficiently silly to be used
unchanged. See http://catb.org/~esr/intercal .
--
"In my last lifetime, John Cowan
I believed in reincarnation; http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
in this lifetime, jcowan@reutershealth.com
I don't." --Thiagi http://www.reutershealth.com
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