Word of the Day
Today's entry has a special place in the hearts of all Dungeons & Dragons fans. This word, this symbol, was once the 27th letter of the alphabet.
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| "What this? You gotta be freakin' kidding me? That's an ampersand!" |
ampersand [am-per-sand]
noun
A character of symbol (&) for 'and'.
The ampersand symbol (&) predates the actual term by nearly two millennium. In the first century, Roman scribes wrote in cursive, that unappealing written form that we all should do away with forever, and so when the wrote et, which means 'and' in latin, the scribes would link the e to the t. Overtime the symbols came to mean and as well.
"Ampersand" came many years later when "7" was the 27th part of the English alphabet. In the 19th century, school children recited the symbol as part of their ABCs and started to say "and per se and" which evolved into the word we use today: "ampersand".
