File:Text_of_Exeter_Domesday_Book_of_1086.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ11167· pop 66· linked from 659 articles

tilde

Also known as ~, ～, ◌̃, ◌̰, ◌̴, ˜

The tilde (, also ) is a grapheme or with a number of uses. The name of the character came into English from Spanish , which, in turn, came from the Latin , meaning 'title' or 'superscription'. Its primary use is as a diacritic in combination with a base letter. Its freestanding form is used in modern texts mainly to indicate approximation.

AI overview

The tilde (~) is a small curved symbol that can be combined with letters to change their sound or meaning, particularly in languages like Spanish, and its name comes from a Latin word meaning "title" or "superscription." When used on its own in modern writing, the tilde typically indicates that something is approximate or rough rather than exact.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Key facts

Symbol.mark: ~◌̃
Symbol.name: Tilde (symbol) Combining tilde (diacritic)

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image: IPA Unicode 0x0334.svg

Show 1 more fact

Commons category: Tildes

Sources (4)

via Wikidata · CC0

~34 min read

Article

46 sections

Contents

History
Use by medieval scribes
Role of mechanical typewriters
The centralized ASCII tilde
Connection to Spanish
Usage
Common use in English
Diacritical use
Pitch
Abbreviation
Nasalization
Palatal n
Tone
International Phonetic Alphabet
Letter extension
Other uses
Punctuation
Approximation
Japanese
Chinese
Mathematics
As a unary operator
As a relational operator
As a diacritic
Physics
Economics
Electronics
Linguistics
Computing
Directories and URLs
Computer languages
Regex
Negation
~~ cast
Other uses
Keyboards
Backup filenames
Microsoft filenames
Juggling notation
Unicode encoding
Letters with tilde
Unicode and Shift JIS encoding of wave dash
Combining double tilde
See also
Notes
References

== History == ===Use by medieval scribes=== The tilde was originally one of a variety of marks written over an omitted letter or several letters as a scribal abbreviation (a "mark of contraction"). Thus, the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to Ao Dñi, with an elevated terminal with a contraction mark placed over the "n", such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labor and the cost of vellum and ink. Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with contraction marks and other abbreviations; only uncommon words were given in full.