was wotd|2007|October|15
English
Image:Hash.png|thumb|An octothorpe
Etymology
Origin disputed. Reportedly a jocular coinage by Bell Labs supervisor Don Macpherson in the early 1960s, from term|octo-||eight (with reference to the eight points) + term||-thorpe (after 1912 Olympic medalist w:Jim Thorpe|Jim Thorpe, in whom Macpherson had some interest). However, Doug Kerr1 attributes term|octatherp to engineers John C. Schaak and Herbert T. Uthlaut, and Lauren Asplund to himself and Howard Eby. The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (1991) supports term|octotherp as the original spelling, and telephone engineers as the source.
Pronunciation
a|RP IPA|/'�kt��θ�:p/
a|US IPA|/'��kto�θ�:rp/
audio|en-us-octothorpe.ogg|Audio (US)
Noun
en-noun
- context|mainly|US A name for the hash or square symbol (#), used mainly in telephony and computing
#*1982, Willard R. Espy, A Children's Almanac of Words at Play, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., page 230
#*: Octothorp is the # on a push-button telephone. Rumor at the telephone company is that a man named Charles B. Octothorp, wanting to make his name famous...
#*2004, Andrew Pitonyak, Openoffice.Org Macros Explained, Hentzenwerke, page 139
#*: Strings are enclosed in double quotation marks, numbers are not enclosed in anything, and dates and Boolean values are enclosed between octothorpe (#) characters.
Synonyms
hash, octothorn, pound sign
External links
pedialite|Number sign
hu:octothorpe
ru:octothorpe
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