When I first read the word ‘ampersand’, I thought it maybe was the name of a new medicine - it turns out it is something we use nearly every day in our online conversations.
The ampersand is the peculiar name of the ‘&’ symbol, an aesthetic way to write ‘and’, the Mirror reveals.
It is used daily while texting or emailing, but is actually a ligature - two or more letters combined in one character - for the word ‘et’, the Latin word for ‘and’.
This fact was shared by author Sarah Pappalardo in a tweet on January 31 which has since gone viral, amassing over 142,000 likes, over 30,900 retweets and thousands of comments.
Pappalardo wrote: "I was today years old when I learned that an ampersand (&) is a ligature for the word 'et'."
If we look closely - and change the font - we can indeed spot the ‘E’ and the ‘T’ hidden in the nifty symbol.
This fact left many people stunned, with one describing it as "sorcery" and another saying it was "fascinating".
It also prompted people to share other things they'd discovered about the ampersand.
One user said: "The word 'ampersand' is a contraction of 'and per se and'."
To which another replied: "Yeah but do you know where 'ampersand' comes from? '&' used to be the last letter of the alphabet, so you'd recite 'X, Y, Z, & and, per se, and,' meaning '& by itself = and'."
The more you know!
