Pronunciation guide for UNIX
How do I pronounce vi , or ! , or /* , or ...? You can start a very long and pointless discussion by wondering about this topic on the net. Some people say vye, some say vee-eye (the vi manual suggests this) and some Roman numerologists say six. How you pronounce vi has nothing to do with whether or not you are a true Unix wizard.
Similarly, you'll find that some people pronounce char as care, and that there are lots of ways to say # or /* or ! or tty or /etc. No one pronunciation is correct - enjoy the regional dialects and accents.
SINGLE CHARACTERS
| Space | black | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| ! | Exclamation point | exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, not (UNIX) (C), dammit (UNIX) | |
| " | Quotation mark (double) | (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears, double ping, double glitch, inverted commas | |
| # | Octothorpe | hash, crosshatch, pound, pound sign, number, number sign, octothorpe, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, unequal, punch mark. Microsoft call this character "sharp" as with C#, J# (but it is not the musical SHARP ♯ which has vertical lines and oblique horizontal lines.) | |
| $ | Dollar Sign | dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string, escape, ding, big-money, Sonne | |
| % | Percent Sign | percent, mod (C), shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes | |
| & | Ampersand | and, amper, address (C), shift-7, andpersand, snowman, bitand (C), donald duck, background (UNIX), pretzel | |
| ' | Typewriter Apostrophe | Quotation mark (single), tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch. (deprecated in Unicode) | |
| * | Asterisk | star, splat, spider, aster, times, wildcard (UNIX), gear, dingle, (Nathan) Hale, bug, twinkle, funny button, pine cone, glob (UNIX) | |
| () | Parentheses | parens, round brackets, bananas, ears, bowlegs | |
| ( | Opening Parenthesis | (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, sad | |
| ) | Closing Parenthesis | already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), happy, thesis | |
| + | Plus Sign | plus, add, cross, and, intersection | |
| , | Comma | tail | |
| - | Hyphen | minus (sign), dash, dak, option, flag, negative (sign), worm, bithorpe | |
| . | Period | dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop, put | |
| / | Slash | stroke, virgule, solidus, slant, diagonal, over, slat, slak, across, compress, reduce, replicate, spare, divided-by, forward slash, shilling | |
| : | Colon | two-spot, double dot, dots | |
| ; | Semicolon | semi, hybrid, go-on | |
| < > | Angle Brackets | angles, funnels, brokets, pointy brackets, widgets | |
| < | Less Than | less, read from (UNIX), from (UNIX), in (UNIX), comesfrom (UNIX), crunch, sucks, left chevron, open pointy (brack[et]), bra, west, (left | open) widget |
| > | Greater Than | more, write to (UNIX), into/toward (UNIX), out (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), zap, blows, right chevron, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket, east, (right | close) widget |
| = | Equal Sign | equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe, half-mesh | |
| ? | Question Mark | question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar (UNIX), huh, ques, kwes, quiz, quark, hook, interrogation point | |
| @ | At Sign | at, each, vortex, whirl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape (tail), cat, snable-a, trunk-a, rose, cabbage, Mercantile symbol, strudel, fetch, commercial-at, monkey (tail) | |
| [ ] | Brackets | square brackets, U-turns, edged parentheses | |
| [ | Left Bracket | bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare | |
| ] | Right Bracket | unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close | |
| |Backslash | reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat, escape (UNIX), backslak, bak, scan, expand, slosh, slope, blash, (whack =microsoft corp. speak) | ||
| ^ | Circumflex | caret, carrot, (top)hat, cap, uphat, party hat, housetop, up arrow, control, boink, chevron, hiccup, power, to-the(-power), fang, sharkfin, and, xor (C), wok, pointer, pipe (UNIX), upper-than | |
| _ | Underscore | underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank, gets, dash, sneak | |
| ` | Grave | (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime, unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch, backping, execute, blip | |
| { } | Braces | curly braces, squiggly braces, curly brackets, squiggle brackets, Tuborgs, ponds, curly chevrons, squirrly braces, hitchcocks, chippendale brackets | |
| { | Left Brace | brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin (C) | |
| } | Right Brace | unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end (C) | |
| | | Vertical Bar | pipe (UNIX), pipe to (UNIX), vertical line, broken line, bar, or (C), bitor (C), vert, v-bar, spike, to (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), thru (UNIX), pipesinta (UNIX), tube, mark, whack, gutter | |
| ~ | Tilde | twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, approx, wiggle, enyay, home (UNIX), worm, not (C) |
MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS
| !? | interrobang (one overlapped character) |
| */ | asterslash (C), times-div |
| /* | slashterix (C), slashaster |
| := | becomes |
| <- | gets |
| << | left-shift (C), double smaller |
| <> | unequal, “box” (Ada language generics). |
| >> | appends (UNIX), cat-astrophe, right-shift (C), double greater |
| -> | arrow (C), pointer to (C), hiccup (C) |
| #! | shebang, sh'bang, wallop |
| \!* | bash-bang-splat |
| () | nil |
| && | and (C), and-and (C), amper-amper, succeeds-then (UNIX) |
| || | or (C), or-or (C), fails-then (UNIX) |
NOTES
| ! | bang | comes from old card punch phenomenon where punching ! code made a loud noise; however, this pronunciation is used in the (non-computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S. too, so ... Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!" |
| ! | store | from FORTH |
| ! | dammit | as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't clobbered a file too badly |
| # | octothorpe | Otherwise known as the numeral sign... In cartography, it is also a symbol for village: eight fields around a central square, and this is the source of its name. Octothorp means eight fields ~ Robert Bringhurst (The Elements of Typographic Style (3rd edition, 2004 p314) A related term (also involving Octal/8) is octalthorpe (Bell System) |
| # | unequal | e.g. Modula-2 |
| $ | string | from BASIC |
| $ | escape | from TOPS-10 |
| $ | Sonne | In the socialist countries, they used and are using all kinds of IBM clones (hardware + software). It was a common practice just to rename everything (IBM 360 → ESER 1040, etc...). Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the "international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with 4 rays spreading from it: ¤ Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun). |
| & | donald duck | from the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck" |
| * | splat | from DEC "spider" glyph |
| * | Nathan Hale | "I have but one asterisk for my country." |
| * | funny button | at Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny button", which did not please management at all when it became part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding company... |
| */ | times-div | from FORTH |
| = | quadrathorpe | half an octothorpe |
| - | bithorpe | half a quadrathorpe (So what's a monothorpe?) |
| . | put | Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation which dates back to the middle 1950's |
| / | across | APL |
| / | compress | APL |
| / | reduce | APL |
| / | replicate | APL |
| / | shilling | from the old British currency symbol |
| := | becomes | e.g. Pascal |
| ; | go-on | Algol68 |
| < | left chevron | from the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rating |
| < | bra | from quantum mechanics |
| <> | unequal | In many languages e.g. Pascal. In Ada language generics “box” <> is commonly used as a wildcard or default placeholder. |
| > | right chevron | from the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rating |
| > | ket | from quantum mechanics |
| @ | snable-a | from Danish; may translate as "trunk-a" |
| @ | trunk-a | "trunk" = "elephant nose" |
| @ | strudel | as in Austrian apple cake |
| @ | fetch | from FORTH |
| \ | scan | APL |
| \ | expand | APL |
| ^ | and | from formal logic |
| ^ | pointer | from PASCAL |
| ^ | upper-than | cf. > and < |
| _ | gets | some alternative representation of underscore resembles a backarrow |
| _ | dash | as distinct from '-' == minus |
| ' | execute | from shell command substitution |
| {} | Tuborgs | from advertizing for well-known Danish beverage |
| {} | curly chevr. | see "< left chevron" |
| {} | hitchcocks | from the old Alfred Hitchcock show, with the stylized profile of the man |
| {} | chippendale brackets | after Chippendale chairs |
| | | broken line | EBCDIC has two vertical bars, one solid and one broken. |
| ~ | enyay | from the Spanish n-tilde |
| () | nil | LISP |
Version 2.92, 2021 added Microsoft # & Ada Box.
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