Upside down E was Re: Mathematical Symbols

[Barbara Need]

>Sounds good.  The standard folk etymology (the one I'd always
>accepted) for the upside-down E is that it designates "Exists", a
>better translation than "Some" for the (appropriately named)
>existential quantifier.  (I think of it as an upside-down rather than
>backward E since only the former story provides a parallel with the
>universal.)  And the upside-down A for the universal quantifier
>stands for "All", as Jim notes.  The fact that the latter involves an
>English word ("All") supports the idea that the former should as well
>("Exists"), but evidently such is not the case.
>
>Larry

My first thought was: wouldn't an upside down E be identical to a
right-side up E? But then I thought, when you look at someone's
writing "upside down" it is the reversed E, because the writing is
also right to left FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE. But when I turn something
upside down, I usually only rotate on a horizontal axis, not also on
the vertical one. Is this the usual sense of turn something upside
down?

Barbara Need
UChicago--Linguistics