That’s right. There used to be a 27th letter in the alphabet, and today we get to celebrate it.
Happy National Ampersand Day.
It took me years to write this symbol properly, and I actually practiced a lot. Now I like using this symbol whenever I can.
In previous posts, I talked about how the symbol “&” has been found at Pompeii in 79 AD. The symbol is a smashing of the letters “e” and “t” because the word “et” means “and” in Latin. That is somewhat logical, but why do we call this symbol ampersand? That is one crazy story.
In the 1700s, the alphabet poem that children recited was a little different than it is today. After the letter Z, children listed “&” as the 27th letter. The way they said it was like this, “…X, Y, Z, and, per se, and” Per se means “by itself”, so they were saying “& by itself is and.” That sounds crazy, and the kids must have thought so too because over time, “and per se and” became ampersand. Ta da!
A spoken or sung phrase that is mispronounced is called a mondegreen. A famous one is “all intensive purposes” when the phrase is “all intents and purposes.” Lots of mondegreens never stick, but ampersand did.
We no longer have twenty-seven letters, but this useful symbol does get its own holiday. Happy Ampersand Day!
Cool.