tilde
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈtɪldə/
ipa: /ˈtɪldi/
rhymes: -ɪldə
Forms: form: tildes
Etymology: Borrowed from Spanish tilde, from Latin titulus (“superscript”) or from tildar. Doublet of titer/titre, title, titlo, tittle, and titulus. Compare Portuguese til.
Senses: examples: text: California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).
ref: 2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025:
glosses: A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation.
In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩ is a palatalized ⟨n⟩, for example in ⟨cañón⟩.
examples: text: The tilde was used similarly in Portuguese on vowels to show that the letter bearing the tilde should be pronounced nasally.
ref: 2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 162:
glosses: A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation.
In Portuguese, ⟨ã⟩ and ⟨õ⟩ are nasalized vowels, for example in ⟨canção⟩.
glosses: A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation.
Another name for the Vietnamese tone mark dấu ngã, which is placed above a vowel to indicate a creaky rising tone (thanh ngã).
glosses: A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation.
Another name for apex, a curved diacritic used in the 17th century to mark final nasalization in the early Vietnamese alphabet. It was an adoption of the Portuguese tilde.
examples: text: swung dash A stock keyboard character, used in mathematics as the sign of similarity (a ~ b) and in lexicography as a sign of repetition. The same sign has been used in symbolic logic to indicate negation, but to avoid confusion, the angular negation symbol (¬) is preferred. Not to be confused with the tilde.
ref: 1992, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style:
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
The character encoded as decimal 126 in the 1967 ASCII character set, and later in the 1992 Unicode character set.
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
A punctuation mark that indicates range (from a number to another number). This use is common in Asia, where the symbol in this case is also called a wave dash.
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
In lexicography, the ⟨~⟩ symbol is used used to indicate the repetition of the topical word or item. In this case, the symbol is also called a swung dash.
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
May be used to represent approximation, in English prose and in mathematics. For example, “My dog weighs ~30 pounds.”
topics: human-sciences
logic
mathematics
philosophy
sciences
glosses: A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
An alternate form of the logical negation operator, which is usually written as ¬.
Derived terms: middle tilde
overtilde
undertilde
zilde
Related terms: word: ASCII
word: hyphen
english: Specific type of tilde
translation: Specific type of tilde
word: swung dash
word: positioned in middle height of line
english: visually similar diacritic in Middle Vietnamese that is often confused with the tilde
translation: visually similar diacritic in Middle Vietnamese that is often confused with the tilde
word: apex
word: ~