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up vote 5 down vote favorite

What can I call the below symbols?

~

`

^

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2  
Please only ask one question at a time - you are asking three separate questions here. – Matt Эллен Sep 24 '11 at 20:59
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Also, can you add some context to this request? These characters are not used in normal English writing. – Matt Эллен Sep 24 '11 at 21:06
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@Hugo: It's actually three single word requests. I see nothing wrong with it other than that it is three questions in one. – Daniel δ Sep 24 '11 at 21:13
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Although it is difficult to enter symbols like these in Google or other search engines, you can often search for them in references like Wikipedia; they return the pages @drɱ65 δ has mentioned in the answer below. – aedia λ Sep 24 '11 at 21:21
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I don't understand the votes to close. We're always getting questions like "What's the word for [ddescription of something]?". This one is as good as it gets! @Gimp has actually given us the exact somethings he wants the names of. No need to keep asking for clarification about exactly what his "something" is! – FumbleFingers Sep 25 '11 at 1:24
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closed as off topic by Matt Эллен, Jasper, simchona♦, Alain Pannetier Φ, waiwai933♦ Sep 24 '11 at 21:20

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2 Answers

up vote 6 down vote accepted

~ is a tilde.

^ is a caret.

` is a grave accent when used as an accent or a backtick, when used alone.

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3  
I've heard ~ (tilde) referred to as wiggle and twiddle in numerous math lectures. Ordinarily, a given lecturer only uses one term or the other and is consistent. The common word for ^ (caret) in math lectures is hat and in LaTex it's obtained by \hat. – jwpat7 Sep 24 '11 at 21:25
@jwpat7: Good grief! - wiggle, twiddle, hat?. I suppose those maths teachers were too busy learning numbers to learn letters. – FumbleFingers Sep 25 '11 at 1:30
@fum, none of those are 'letters' – whoabackoff Oct 6 '11 at 16:05
@whoabackoff: True, but I'd still classify such teachers as "unlettered", even though I've no doubt they'd all at least know the alphabet. I find it particularly depressing that jwpat7's reference to "math lectures" implies we're talking about reasonably advanced maths teaching here, where tildes and carets are common symbols. – FumbleFingers Oct 7 '11 at 16:25
@fum, it's not uncommon for symbols to go by different names in mathematics: exclamation mark for factorials, slash for division, colon for ratios, full stops for decimal points... even symbols like the asterisk and number signs go by different names in math. I find this in no way depressing, and would never classify these professors as "unlettered". – whoabackoff Oct 7 '11 at 18:02
up vote 2 down vote
  • ~ - this is a tilde
  • ^ - this is a caret
  • ` - and this is a backtick
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