top | item 2958067

Interesting backstory of harmless "&"

19 points| Wazzup12 | 14 years ago |hotword.dictionary.com

4 comments

order

TillE|14 years ago

This is one of those stories that sounds suspiciously like urban legend bullshit, but upon further investigation, is actually true. Huh.

Most surprisingly, Italian borrowed the word "ampersand" as-is from English. German uses the more sensible "Et-Zeichen" ("et sign/character"), though.

pan69|14 years ago

In the Netherlands (Dutch language) we still use "per se" in our day to day speak which means, just like the article points out, "in itself".