Kathleen from Hebron, Connecticut, is curious about the term hashtag. She associates it with the symbol #, which she calls a pound sign. When that symbol, also known as a hash mark, doublecross, hatch mark, octothorpe, or number sign, is appended to a keyword, the whole thing is known as a hashtag. It’s used on Twitter, among other places, to help label a message on a particular topic. This is part of a complete episode.
You must log in to post a comment.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Episode Archives
Baby's Breath (episode #1545) 03/23/2020: Have you ever googled your own name and found someone else who goes by the very same moniker? There's a word for that: googleganger. Plus,... [more]
Hog on Ice (episode #1544) 03/09/2020: One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There's no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft... [more]
Goody Two-Shoes (episode #1543) 02/24/2020: She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it's the young Mary Anning, who went on to... [more]
Baby Blues (episode #1542) 02/10/2020: A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn't about "suffering." It's from a Latin word... [more]
Walkie Talkie (episode #1541) 01/27/2020: One of the most powerful words you'll ever hear — and one of the most poignant — isn't in dictionaries yet. But it probably will... [more]
The hash mark has a number of names. One of the oddest is the “octothorpe”, also spelled octothorp, octathorp,and octatherp. In the 1960s and 70s when AT&T was preparing to introduce touch tone dialing, Bell Labs decided they needed two additional buttons to perform certain newly introduced functions. According to one story, one of their engineers noticed the sign as an eight-pointed figure, and added the suffix “thorpe” to pay homage to Olympian Jim Thorpe.
Al Zagofsky
Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania