[Ads-l] Happy Þornsday!

[Wilson Gray]

Curse my uncorrected astigmatism! I nearly deleted this very interesting
thread because I, at first glance, took it to be spam entitled, "Happy
_Pornsday_."

On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 7:13 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:

> https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=ampersand
> ampersand (n.)
> 1837, contraction of and per se and, meaning "(the character) '&' by itself
> is 'and' " (a hybrid phrase, partly in Latin, partly in English). An
> earlier form of it was colloquial ampassy (1706). The distinction is to
> avoid confusion with & in such formations as &c., a once common way of
> writing etc. (the et in et cetera is Latin for "and"). The letters a, I,
> and o also formerly (15c.-16c.) were written a per se, etc., especially
> when standing alone as words.
>
> The symbol is based on the Latin word et "and," and comes from an old Roman
> system of shorthand signs (ligatures) attested in Pompeiian graffiti, and
> 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 capital
> 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.
>
> In old schoolbooks the ampersand was printed at the end of the alphabet and
> thus by 1880s the word ampersand had acquired a slang sense of "posterior,
> rear end, hindquarters."
>
> On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 6:50 PM Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is "and per se 'and'" an eggcorn for "ampersand"? Or vice versa?
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020, 3:20 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Yes, "X, Y, Z, and per-se *and*". I've known of its place in the
> alphabet
> > > almost since I could read. My parents had, and I think I've kept it, a
> > > Peter Piper book, with the original rhymes (
> > > https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25027/25027-h/25027-h.htm) and modern,
> > > i.e.
> > > ca. 1930's illustrations based on the originals you can see at the
> link.
> > > But it had an extra page, for *&*, whose rhyme as I recall was not in
> the
> > > pattern of the others, and which ended
> > >
> > > So we have had to print this page on *&*paper.
> > >
> > > And they did!
> > >
> > > It's not English in origin AFAIK, but rather a Latin ligature for *et*.
> > >
> > > MAM
> > > Order of Palindromic and Self-Reflective Initials
> > >
> > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 3:08 PM Jonathan Lighter <
> wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > According to no less a source than an old Ripley's Believe It or Not
> > > > cartoon, "&" was formerly the "twenty-seventh letter of the
> alphabet."
> > > > (Makes sense when you consider the old form "&c.").
> > > >
> > > > JL
> > > >
> > > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020 at 2:31 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I don't understand. What about Ƿ & Ᵹ, and "quantity"?
> > > > >
> > > > > MAM
> > > > >
> > > > > On Tue, Jun 9, 2020, 10:18 AM Michael Everson <
> everson at evertype.com>
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Hi Mark! Thanks for celebrating.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > It is still there. I don’t know how you got the “wynnyogh"
> > > transformed
> > > > > > into “quantity” though.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Michael Everson
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > On 9 Jun 2020, at 12:56, Mark Mandel <markamandel at GMAIL.COM>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On Þornsday, 1994-06-09, CEN/TC304 resolved that in a default
> > > > > > multilingual European sort, ÞORN shall be sorted as a separate
> > letter
> > > > > after
> > > > > > Z. Subsequently, ISO/TC37/SC2/WG3 resolved that in its work on
> > > > > alphabetical
> > > > > > ordering, ÞORN shall be sorted as a separate letter after Z. Most
> > > > > recently,
> > > > > > JTC1/SC22/WG20 resolved that in its work of producing a default
> > > > > > multilingual sort for ISO/IEC 10646, ÞORN shall be sorted as a
> > > separate
> > > > > > letter after Z.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Copied years ago from
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > http://www.evertype.com/standards/quantity/thorn.html
> > > > > > > <http://www.evertype.com/standards/wynnyogh/thorn.html>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > which is now *404 Not found*.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Mark Mandel
> > > > > >
> > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > > > > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> > > truth."
> > > >
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> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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