The Pronunciation Guide
version 2.5
| SINGLE CHARACTERS |
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| | Space | blank, ghost (NetHack) |
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| ! | Exclamation point | exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, potion (NetHack), not (UNIX) (C), dammit (UNIX) |
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| " | Quotation mark | (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears, double ping, double glitch, amulet (NetHack), web (NetHack), inverted commas |
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| # | Crosshatch | pound, pound sign, number, number sign, sharp, octothorpe, hash, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, sink (NetHack), corridor (NetHack), unequal, punch mark |
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| $ | Dollar Sign | dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string, escape, ding, big-money, gold (NetHack), Sonne |
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| % | Percent Sign | percent, mod (C), shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes, food (NetHack) |
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| & | Ampersand | and, amper, address (C), shift-7, andpersand, snowman, bitand (C), donald duck, daemon (NetHack), background (UNIX), pretzel |
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| ' | Apostrophe | (single) quote, tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch, lurker above (NetHack) |
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| * | Asterisk | star, splat, spider, aster, times, wildcard (UNIX), gear, dingle, (Nathan) Hale, bug, gem (NetHack), twinkle, funny button, pine cone, glob (UNIX) |
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| () | Parentheses | parens, round brackets, bananas, ears, bowlegs |
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| ( | Left Parenthesis | (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, sad, tool (NetHack) |
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| ) | Right Parenthesis | already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), happy, thesis, weapon (NetHack) |
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| + | Plus Sign | plus, add, cross, and, intersection, door (NetHack), spellbook (NetHack) |
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| , | Comma | tail, trapper (NetHack) |
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| - | Hyphen | minus (sign), dash, dak, option, flag, negative (sign), worm, bithorpe |
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| . | Period | dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop, put, floor (NetHack) |
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| / | Slash | stroke, virgule, solidus, slant, diagonal, over, slat, slak, across, compress, reduce, replicate, spare, divided-by, wand (NetHack), forward slash, shilling |
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| : | Colon | two-spot, double dot, dots, chameleon (NetHack) |
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| ; | Semicolon | semi, hybrid, giant eel (NetHack), go-on |
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| <> | Angle Brackets | angles, funnels, brokets, pointy brackets, widgets |
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| < | Less Than | less, read from (UNIX), from (UNIX), in (UNIX), comesfrom (UNIX), crunch, sucks, left chevron, open pointy (brack[et]), bra, upstairs (NetHack), west, (left|open) widget |
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| > | Greater Than | more, write to (UNIX), into/toward (UNIX), out (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), zap, blows, right chevron, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket, downstairs (NetHack), east, (right|close) widget |
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| = | Equal Sign | equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe, half-mesh, ring (NetHack) |
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| ? | Question Mark | question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar (UNIX), huh, ques, kwes, quiz, quark, hook, scroll (NetHack), interrogation point |
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| @ | At Sign | at, each, vortex, whirl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape (tail), cat, snable-a, trunk-a, rose, cabbage, Mercantile symbol, strudel, fetch, shopkeeper (NetHack), human (NetHack), commercial-at, monkey (tail) |
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| [] | Brackets | square brackets, U-turns, edged parentheses |
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| [ | Left Bracket | bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare, armor (NetHack) |
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| ] | Right Bracket | unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close, mimic (NetHack) |
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| \ | Backslash | reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat, escape (UNIX), backslak, bak, scan, expand, opulent throne (NetHack), slosh, slope, blash |
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| ^ | Circumflex | caret, carrot, (top)hat, cap, uphat, party hat, housetop, up arrow, control, boink, chevron, hiccup, power, to-the(-power), fang, sharkfin, and, xor (C), wok, trap (NetHack), pointer, pipe (UNIX), upper-than |
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| _ | Underscore | underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank, chain (NetHack), gets, dash, sneak |
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| ` | Grave | (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime, unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch, backping, execute, boulder (NetHack), rock (NetHack), blip |
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| {} | Braces | curly braces, squiggly braces, curly brackets, squiggle brackets, Tuborgs, ponds, curly chevrons, squirrly braces, hitchcocks, chippendale brackets |
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| { | Left Brace | brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin (C), fountain (NetHack) |
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| } | Right Brace | unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end (C), a pool (NetHack) |
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| | | Vertical Bar | pipe (UNIX), pipe to (UNIX), vertical line, broken line, bar, or (C), bitor (C), vert, v-bar, spike, to (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), thru (UNIX), pipesinta (UNIX), tube, mark, whack, gutter, wall (NetHack) |
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| ~ | Tilde | twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, approx, wiggle, enyay, home (UNIX), worm, not (C) |
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| MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS |
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| !? | interrobang (one overlapped character) |
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| */ | asterslash (C), times-div |
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| /* | slashterix (C), slashaster |
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| := | becomes |
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| <- | gets |
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| << | left-shift (C), double smaller |
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| <> | unequal |
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| >> | appends (UNIX), cat-astrophe, right-shift (C), double greater |
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| -> | arrow (C), pointer to (C), hiccup (C) |
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| #! | sh'bang, wallop |
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| \!* | bash-bang-splat |
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| () | nil |
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| && | and (C), and-and (C), amper-amper, succeeds-then (UNIX) |
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| || | or (C), or-or (C), fails-then (UNIX) |
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| NOTES |
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| ! | bang | comes from old card punch phenom where punching ! code made a loud noise; however, this pronunciation is used in the (non-
computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S. too, so ...
Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that
character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to
denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!" |
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| ! | store | from FORTH |
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| ! | dammit | as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't clobbered a file too badly |
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| # | octothorpe | from Bell System (orig. octalthorpe) |
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| # | unequal | e.g. Modula-2 |
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| $ | string | from BASIC |
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| $ | escape | from TOPS-10 |
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| $ | Sonne | In the socialist countries, they used and are using all kinds of IBM clones (hardware + software). It was a common practice just to rename everything (IBM 360 → ESER 1040, etc...).
Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the "international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with 4 rays spreading from it: ¤
Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun). |
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| & | donald duck | from the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck" |
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| * | splat | from DEC "spider" glyph |
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| * | Nathan Hale | "I have but one asterisk for my country." |
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| * | funny button | at Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny button", which did not please management at all when it became part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding company... |
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| */ | times-div | from FORTH |
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| = | quadrathorpe | half an octothorpe |
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| - | bithorpe | half a quadrathorpe (So what's a monothorpe?) |
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| . | put | Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation which dates back to the middle 1950's |
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| / | across | APL |
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| / | compress | APL |
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| / | reduce | APL |
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| / | replicate | APL |
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| / | shilling | from the British currency symbol |
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| := | becomes | e.g. Pascal |
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| ; | go-on | Algol68 |
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| < | left chevron | from the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rating |
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| < | bra | from quantum mechanics |
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| <> | unequal | e.g. Pascal |
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| > | right chevron | see "< left chevron" |
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| > | ket | from quantum mechanics |
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| @ | snable-a | from Danish; may translate as "trunk-a" |
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| @ | trunk-a | "trunk" = "elephant nose" |
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| @ | strudel | as in Austrian apple cake |
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| @ | fetch | from FORTH |
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| \ | scan | APL |
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| \ | expand | APL |
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| ^ | and | from formal logic |
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| ^ | pointer | from PASCAL |
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| ^ | upper-than | cf. > and < |
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| _ | gets | some alternative representation of underscore resembles a backarrow |
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| _ | dash | as distinct from '-' == minus |
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| ` | execute | from shell command substitution |
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| {} | Tuborgs | from advertizing for well-known Danish beverage |
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| {} | curly chevr. | see "< left chevron" |
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| {} | hitchcocks | from the old Alfred Hitchcock show, with the stylized profile of the man |
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| {} | chippendale brackets | after Chippendale chairs |
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| | | broken line | EBCDIC has two vertical bars, one solid and one broken. |
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| ~ | enyay | from the Spanish n-tilde |
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| () | nil | LISP |
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from ftp://ftp.wg.omron.co.jp/pub/unix-faq/docs/pronunciation-guide (19 Nov 1995)
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