Saturday 3 October 2015

What is th@ thing?

Courtesy Sam Borden in the New York Times I learn that the thing we call "at", the @, is called different things in other languages.
In Danish it's "elephant's trunk", in Polish it's "monkey", in Dutch it's "monkey's tail", in Czech it's "rolled up fish fillet" in Greek it's "duckling".
In Hungarian it's a "worm", in Italian it's a "snail", in Ukrainian it's a "dog", in Taiwanese it's a "mouse".
Interesting, what?
I wonder why our word for @ in English is far the most prosaic of this lot.

Sent from my iPhone