octothorpe

English

WOTD – 15 October 2007

An octothorpe

Alternative forms

octothorp

Etymology

Origin disputed. Reportedly a jocular coinage by Bell Labs supervisor Don Macpherson in the early 1960s, from octo- (“eight”), with reference to its eight points, + -thorpe (after 1912 Olympic medalist Jim Thorpe, in whom Macpherson was interested). However, Doug Kerr [1] attributes octatherp to a practical joke by engineers John C. Schaak, Herbert T. Uthlaut, and Lauren Asplund upon himself and Howard Eby.

The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (1991) supports octotherp as the original spelling, and telephone engineers as the source.

Yet another common belief is that the name for this ancient sign for numbering derives from thorpe, the Old Norse word for a village or farm that is often seen in British placenames. The symbol was originally used in mapmaking, representing a village surrounded by eight fields, so it was named the octothorpe literally meaning "eight fields".

Pronunciation

(RP) IPA: /ˈɒktəʊθɔːp/
(US) IPA: /ˈɑːktoʊθɔːrp/
Audio (US)
(file)

Noun

octothorpe (plural octothorpes)

(chiefly US) The hash or square symbol (#), used mainly in telephony and computing
- 1982, Willard R. Espy, A Children's Almanac of Words at Play, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., page 230
  Octothorp is the # on a push-button telephone. Rumor at the telephone company is that a man named Charles B. Octothorp, wanting to make his name famous...
- 2004, Andrew Pitonyak, Openoffice.Org Macros Explained, Hentzenwerke, page 139
  Strings are enclosed in double quotation marks, numbers are not enclosed in anything, and dates and Boolean values are enclosed between octothorpe (#) characters.