The symbolic representation we make love as the ampersand can betraced as far backas some graffito on a Pompeian bulwark around the 1st century CE . It was n’t call an ampersand at the time — it was just a ligature of the cursive letterseandtforming the Latin wordet , which mean “ and . ” ( This is whyetc.is sometimes written&c . )
At first,&had competition for usance , as shorthandet — the “ Tironian et ” ( ⁊)—is said to have been created perhaps a hundred year before as part of Cicero ’s secretary Tiro ’s extensive shorthand system of rules , thenotae Tironianae . Although it persisted into the Middle Ages , finally the entirenotae Tironianaefell out of habit , leaving&to evolve and spread along with thelanguage .
By the other 19th century,&was often treated as the27th letterin the alphabet , fall right-hand afterz . Without a deed of conveyance yet , it was still read as justand , which made reciting the end of the alphabet a little perplexing — x , y , z , andand . kid started inserting the phraseand per se andto discover it , and over prison term , this all got blended together to sound more and more likeampersand .
The mondegreen name for the hundred - old symbolfirst appearedin the 1790s . More than 200 age later , this little bit of punctuation mark has got a whole day — September 8 — dedicated to celebrate itshistoryand continued use .
A version of this story operate in 2018 ; it has been updated for 2023 . Have you got a Big Question you ’d like us to reply ? If so , let us hump by e-mail us atbigquestions@mentalfloss.com .
Are you a logophile ? Do you need to learn strange Good Book and old - timey slang to make conversation more interesting , or discover bewitching tidbits about the bloodline of mundane musical phrase ? Then pick up our new Koran , The queer Compendium of Wonderful Words : A Miscellany of Obscure Terms , Bizarre Phrases , & Surprising Etymologies , out June 6 ! you’re able to pre - order your transcript onAmazon , Barnes & Noble , Books - A - Million , orBookshop.org .
