Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The diacritical mark ( ˜ ), used for example over the letter n in Spanish to indicate the palatal nasal sound (ny), as in cañón, “canyon,” and over the vowels a and o in Portuguese to indicate nasalization, as in pão, “bread.”
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A diacritic mark (˜) placed over the letter n in Spanish to indicate that it is sounded as a palatal n, or very nearly like
n followed by y, as inseñor , pronounced sã˙nyôr′ , cañon, pronounced känyôn′ , and hence in English written canyon.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The accentual mark placed over n, and sometimes over l, in Spanish words [thus, ñ, �], indicating that, in pronunciation, the sound of the following vowel is to be preceded by that of the initial, or consonantal, y.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The grapheme of character
~ . - noun A
key found on some types ofkeyboards . - noun logic The character used to represent
negation , usually~ or¬ .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a diacritical mark (~) placed over the letter n in Spanish to indicate a palatal nasal sound or over a vowel in Portuguese to indicate nasalization
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word tilde.
Examples
-
The tilde is the ~, probably located at the upper left of your keyboard.
Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] DanielPulido 2010
-
Far too many people mistakenly refer to this key as the tilde (~) key because the tilde is the shifted character over the accent grave on standard US keyboards.
Adobe Blogs Todd Kopriva 2010
-
The tilde is the ~, probably located at the upper left of your keyboard.
Conservapedia - Recent changes [en] DanielPulido 2010
-
It's called a tilde, and it lets you turn the gravity off.
-
It's called a tilde, and it lets you turn the gravity off.
-
And I had one other idea convoed to me through Etsy... a "tilde" which is that squiggly punctuation mark used in the Spanish language over an "N".
Kiss My Curvy "S" or What Should I Name These? Studio Marcy - Marcy Lamberson 2008
-
Use a "tilde" e.g.: "~infosys" finds IT companies similar to Infosys 13
Recently Uploaded Slideshows guest526b5c 2009
-
I need a better domain, one without a tilde which is a pain to type, though once you add it to your Blackberry bookmarks it’s just a click.
-
To type the ñ Press the shift key and the tilde key ~ nothing will happen until you press the n key, when you do it in sequence you will get the ñ.
Should vs. Must? 2009
-
To type the ñ Press the shift key and the tilde key ~ nothing will happen until you press the n key, when you do it in sequence you will get the ñ.
Should vs. Must? 2009
inkhorn commented on the word tilde
Tilde Accent: jalapeño
December 19, 2006
chained_bear commented on the word tilde
There's a cool article I happened to find and have no affiliation with whatsoever. http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/04/history_of_the_tilde
February 3, 2007
seanahan commented on the word tilde
This symbol is used in various places as a "not" symbol, sometimes pronounced as "twiddle", with "~=" akin to "!=".
February 3, 2007
uselessness commented on the word tilde
I always thought that use meant approximately, not not. Handwritten on paper you'd see one tilde drawn above another, to make a squiggly equals sign. It's the visual cue for for "fuzzy" equality, used when the answer is close to a given value but probably not exactly that value. Just like the analog counterpart to != is an equals sign with a slash through it, evoking a "no parking" symbol to nullify the operator. Then again, we all tend to draw symbols differently, and maybe use different visual cues; so I'm not saying you're wrong. I just haven't seen that before.
By the way, let's set the record straight... is it pronounced "tild" or "tildee?" Or "twiddle," which is another thing I've never seen before?
February 4, 2007
seanahan commented on the word tilde
Twiddle is a thing used in math. I've heard the pronunciations "tild", "tildee", and "tild-uh". I can't remember where I saw ~= used to be not equals, so I'll have to track it down. I've also seen ~ used to be about equals.
February 4, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word tilde
I've always pronounced it "tildeh," or "tild-uh," as seanahan listed it. I have only ever known it as the symbol inkhorn cited so I can't speak to that usage, though OED lists its secondary meaning as "a symbol in Math. and Logic, chiefly to indicate negation."
February 13, 2007
uselessness commented on the word tilde
I stand corrected. I need to pick up the OED. Or is it searchable online?
February 13, 2007
chained_bear commented on the word tilde
It's searchable online, but I believe you have to be a subscriber to use it. My employer is a subscriber and I use it frequently at work.
They do have an RSS feed (or is that redundant?) for a Word of the Day, which I've never used but it seems like it would be fun. Maybe I'll try it.
February 13, 2007
whichbe commented on the word tilde
also known as the 'swung dash'.
April 23, 2008
applefat commented on the word tilde
=~ (not ~=) is used in the computer language Perl, and acts as the "binding operator" for regular expressions.
January 6, 2009
Prolagus commented on the word tilde
Everybody stand back! I know regular expressions. :D
January 6, 2009