Tilde \Til"de\, n. [Sp., fr. L. titulus a superscription, title,
token, sign. See Title, n.]
The accentual mark placed over n, and sometimes over l, in
Spanish words [thus, [~n], [~l]], indicating that, in
pronunciation, the sound of the following vowel is to be
preceded by that of the initial, or consonantal, y.
[1913 Webster]
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tilde
"~" ASCII character 126.
Common names are: ITU-T: tilde; squiggle; twiddle; not.
Rare: approx; wiggle; swung dash; enyay; INTERCAL: sqiggle
(sic).
Used as C's prefix bitwise negation operator; and in
Unix csh, GNU Emacs, and elsewhere, to stand for the
current user's home directory, or, when prefixed to a login
name, for the given user's home directory.
The "swung dash" or "approximation" sign is not quite the same
as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for
both (compare angle brackets).
[Has anyone else heard this called "tidal" (as in wave)?]
(1996-10-18)
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