Hey everybody, welcome back to explain like I'm five. The podcast we take the questions you always wanted to ask and talk about them in a way that's easy to understand. We are your hosts, I'm Tim. Everyone, I'm Kevin.
So Kevin, today we're talking about a symbol that everyone will recognize, but probably needs a little bit of explanation. And that is the ampersand. Why does the ampersand exist? And isn't there a rich history behind it?
Oh yes, yes it is. And I'm sure we'll talk about that, but it's also quite useful. I mean, it's convenient because it's much quicker to write the symbol, the ampersand symbol than the word and and D. But there's also actually a legal use of the ampersand.
The symbol does perform a very specific legal function in some settings. Ah yes, like in movie credits. Exactly. In movie credits, the ampersand symbol means that the writers worked together.
So for example, if you see every scene credits, Tim and then ampersand and Kevin, it means we work together as writers. On the other hand, if the word and and D is used, like Tim and D Kevin, that means we both worked on it, but not at the same time. So if any of our listeners have ever noticed why they use both formats when they wrote credits, that's actually why. You know the other interesting thing that I was listening to know is that the ampersand used to be part of the alphabet, didn't it?
That's also right. The English alphabet didn't always go from A to Z. In fact, as recently as the 19th century, if you had been learning your ABCs in that period of time, your alphabet would have had a 27th member. The ampersand, of course.
It was one of these letters that had its own word and sometimes was followed by per se. That's right. Per se means through itself, by itself, or even like in itself. So you would use per se to mean what you said can stand without referring to anything else intrinsically, kind of taking without any qualifications.
So it was back all the way back in the 19th century when reciting the alphabet in English speaking schools. Any letter that could also be used as a word in itself. Like a letter A or a letter I. Exactly.
Those were repeated with the Latin expression per se. So they say A per se A and I per se I. So when they got to the and, and you know the ampersand simple as a 27th letter, they would say, I'll slowly say it out, and per se and. I see.
So the alphabet ended with X, Y, Z and per se and. Yeah, yeah. And so eventually, you know, when you kind of slurred all together and per se and, sounds like ampersand. And the term had then pretty much entered common English usage by something like 1837.
So 1837 was when the phrase ampersand started being used, but the symbol of the ampersand has origins much earlier than that, right? Oh, yeah, that does go back much further. Yes, the symbol, it appears in the historical record for the first time in some anonymous graffiti all the way back in Pompeii, the famous ancient city, which we know was buried in 79 AD with the eruption of Malibu suvius. OK, well, that's much further back in time, but it's nice that there's that date to peg it to.
Now, one final thing to explain before we end is why does the ampersand symbol look the way it does? So this goes all the way back to how Latin works. So the Latin word et, et, it actually means and, and is formed by two letters, E and T. So if you write E and T in old Roman cursive, that's basically the original ampersand.
And there's actually a fancy name for where you make a character out of two or more letters. It's called a ligature. So the ampersand is a ligature during the letters E and T. See if you can try to spot it next time.
So I'm definitely going to notice that now, at any time I see the ampersand character, I'm sure many of our listeners will do that too. Thanks Kevin. Did you learn something new? If you did, send us an email.
We are at ELI5, the podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from you, especially when you've got suggestions for future episodes. And as always, thank you to the community at r-slash-explennacom5. We will see you all next week.