Binding Words (And Letters) Together

It’s always struck me as odd that the word ‘ampersand’ is so much longer than the word ‘and’. After all, it’s the descriptive name for the character ‘&’. Which, of course, is a shortened form of ‘and’.

But I’ve only just found out why.

Referring to my trusty edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, I find that it’s a “corruption of ‘and per se and’”.

Who knew?

When the alphabet was longer

And its roots lie in the now-discarded 19th-century educational practice of reciting all 26 letters of the alphabet plus the ‘&’ as the 27th.

At that point, any letter that could also be used as a word in itself (eg ‘A’, ‘I,’ or ‘&’) would be preceded by the Latin phrase ‘per se’ (‘by itself’) to clarify that you were referring to the symbol and not the word.

Thus, ‘X, Y, Z and per se and’. Which morphed over time to become ‘ampersand’.

The OED records the first usage in 1837: ‘He has hardly learned what Ampersand means, afore they give him a horse.’

The ampersand is still widely used as an abbreviation for ‘and’, particularly in informal settings. It also crops up in business names (eg Marks & Spencer) as well as abbreviations containing the word ‘and’ eg R&B (rhythm and blues) and B&B (bed and breakfast).

Curling around itself

All this then begs the question: what’s the origin of the symbol itself? It turns out it goes back to the first century AD when Roman scribes wrote in Latin cursive. And derives from the Latin word ‘et’, which means ‘and’. Linking the letters e and t, called a ligature, created the ampersand symbol.

I love this notion of the ampersand being formed as a character by the joining together of two separate letters. Especially as the purpose of the word ‘and’ is to bind words together. And to remind our readers that we’re not finished yet.

Anyway, now you know.

Or maybe you knew already! In which case, give yourself a pat on the back. But why on earth didn't you tell me?

Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash