Re: American English translation of character names

From: Michael Everson (everson@evertype.com)
Date: Thu Dec 18 2003 - 10:53:37 EST

  • Next message: Doug Ewell: "Re: [OT] Keyboards (was: American English translation of character names)"

    At 09:01 -0500 2003-12-18, John Cowan wrote:

    >"Underscore" would suggest rather U+0332, the combining low line. As
    >for "pilcrow", it's probably descended from a perversion of "paragraph",
    >but nobody knows for sure.

    The OED gives other forms for it:

    15th-century pylcraft(e), pilecrafte; 16th-century pilcrowe;
    17th-century pilkrow, pill-crow, peelcrow, pilgrow. Apparently for
    pilled crow, cf. pilcord, pilgarlic. The application of the word,
    with the form pylcraft, has suggested that it originated in a
    perversion of PARAGRAPH, through pargrafte, *parcrafte, etc.: cf
    quote c 1460 and 1617. But the history of the word is obscure, and
    evidence is wanting.

    -- 
    Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Thu Dec 18 2003 - 12:13:07 EST