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Definition 2024


octothorpe

octothorpe

English

An octothorpe

Alternative forms

Noun

octothorpe (plural octothorpes)

  1. (chiefly US) The hash or square symbol (#), used mainly in telephony and computing.
    • 1973, U.S patent application ser. no. 05/422,816 (filed Dec. 3 1973), issued as patent no. 3,920,926 (Nov. 18, 1975), Telephone Data Set Including Visual Display Means, col. 3 (first published use of the word)
      ...the octothorp (#) key generates a command to send the contents of the memory unto the telephone line through a send circuit...
    • 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.

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References

  1. Keith Houston (2013), “The Octothorpe”, in Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks, W. W. Norton & Company, pages 41-57