[Ads-l] Happy Þornsday!

[Laurence Horn]

So then it’s *not* true that Þornhub.com, the online platform for amateur and professional video sharing of materials on Old English, Gothic, Old Norse, and Icelandic, has over 25 million registered users?  I knew it was too good to be true.  

> On Jun 9, 2020, at 8:23 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> 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."
>>>>> 
>>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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