What is an ampersand, and how did it come to mean this?

mk2norwich

An ampersand (&) gets its name from 'per se' and 'and'. (Source: Reader's Digest Universal Dictionary) Sep 22 03, 8:52 AM

gmackematix

I think "&" is a stylised form of the Latin word for "and", that is "et". Sep 22 03, 12:08 PM

Hamlet.

Well into the nineteenth century, throughout England and much of the United States, the ampersand was taught to children as part of their ABCs. It became, in effect, the twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. Teachers wanted students to learn that "A" and "I" were words as well as letters. They differentiated these letters by teaching the children to recite "A per se 'A'" (meaning "A by itself means 'A'") and "I per se 'I.'" After reciting the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, children were taught to say "and per se and" (meaning "and by itself means 'and'"), but children slurred the phrase to "ampersand". The Oxford English Dictionary cites 1837 as the first recorded reference to the word that kids created -- Ampersand... Sep 22 03, 12:47 PM

salami_swami

The ampersand is the & symbol, and this link gives you all the information you would need to knwo about it. :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand Feb 27 09, 11:52 AM

McFlyFave

1837, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself is 'and.' " The symbol is based on the L. word et "and," and comes from an old Roman system of shorthand signs (ligatures), attested in Pompeiian graffiti, but not (as sometimes stated) from the Tironian Notes, which was a different form of shorthand, probably invented by Cicero's companion Marcus Tullius Tiro, which used a different symbol, something like a reversed gamma, to indicate et. This Tironian symbol was maintained by some medieval scribes, including Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, who sprinkled their works with a symbol like a numeral 7 to indicate the word and. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ampersand&searchmode=none Feb 27 09, 1:03 PM