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Could someone sort this out for me, please? I think this is one of those things that is understandable...as long as one already knows what it is. Origin:
1820–30; contr. of and per se and lit., (the symbol) & by itself (stands for) and; see per se From Dictionary.com
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I'm not sure what the question is. What part of the etymology don't you understand? The per se is a Latin phrase meaning 'by or of itself'. The whole phrase, 'and per se and' is just a fancy way of saying that the symbol is just the word and. The nd in the first and is converted to an m sound by assimilation with the p of per.
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And the symbol itself (&) is a stylized Latin et 'and'. I like the character, ultimately from Tironian Notes that was used in Old English MSS (⁊). It's still used in Irish. Its code is U+204A, so if you wrap that number between an ampersand, an octothorpe, and a lowercase x, on the left, and a semi-colon on the right, you should get it to show up in HTML or XML.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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At the bottom of Dict.com page it is showed in a simple way:
am·per·sand (ām'pər-sānd')
n. The character or sign (&) representing the word and.
# octothorpe, thanks
Last edited by BranShea; 05/21/10 11:21 AM.
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And the symbol itself (&) is a stylized Latin et 'and'. I like the character, ultimately from Tironian Notes that was used in Old English MSS (⁊). It's still used in Irish. Its code is U+204A, so if you wrap that number between an ampersand, an octothorpe, and a lowercase x, on the left, and a semi-colon on the right, you should get it to show up in HTML or XML. I will sometimes just use the number 7, which is on the same key as the &. Coincidence? IDTS.
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I got that the first nd got converted to m, and I know what an ampersand is, but.
The per se is a Latin phrase meaning 'by or of itself'. The whole phrase, 'and per se and' is just a fancy way of saying that the symbol is just the word and.
"And by itself and" just doesn't make sense to me.
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1820–30; contr. of and per se and lit., (the symbol) & by itself (stands for) and; see per se
For this part I'm with you Jackie. It's abacadabra, the Latin is confusing. The history of the sign is interesting though.
btw. The thing called octothorpe here # is on our phones and all automatic answering machines tell us: "and/or close with a "little fence" ". Small countries use small words.
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Quinion has a good run-down on the word octothorpe. As far as ampersand goes, it's a convention from old glossary entries that read "& per se and", i.e., "The sign &, by itself, means and.". You can refer to single letters as, A per se, in the OED2, "the letter A when standing by itself, especially when making a word", &c. (Reminds me of the Dord entry in the Webster's 2nd.)
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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 I've always had some problems with others peoples' logic. If "The sign &, by itself, means and." then why per se drag in the per se? So & means and and..the A per se Jackie!!!
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Now, this: "The sign &, by itself, means and.". makes perfect sense. Why didn't the dictionary have that instead of what it did?!
tsuwm, how do I make that wossname: a combined question mark & exclamation point? A thunderfurken or some such.
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