Generate the answer for a given question. The question requires common knowledge of English. Make sure that the answer is in detail, long, consistent with the context, and requires general knowledge of English. To be less repetitive, please vary your language for each question. Give a proper explanation to answer, and if necessary, provide the definition of various terms. And conclude your answer if it's long. If you have used other resources (e.g., Merriam Webster's.) to answer the question, include citations in your answer. You don't need to paraphrase the context of your resources, but make sure that your answer is consistent and complete.
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Question: How did 7 come to be an abbreviation for 'and' in Old English? is a beautiful question about the Tiroian 'et', which is now the '' character 1. My question is what impact did the association of this 7-like-glyph have on the eventual placement of keyboards placing the & on Shift+7 combination? The Wikipedia article on the QUERTY keyboard shows that the ampersand was a separate key in the bottom left of the keyboard in the original patent application drawings. The patent was filed in 1878. The Das Keyboard blog shows a Full Duplex keyboard (with separate keys for upper and lower case letters) from 1897 with no ampersand key at all. I have not yet been able to find a reference to the first keyboard to place the ampersand and 7 together. The Wiki article on the ampersand only mentions that it is usually keyed via Shift+7, but occasionally on 6 or 8 instead. Dvorak layouts appear to share similar associations between 7 and &. So is it a coincidence? Or is there some association? 1 This looks really different in the EL&U site fontface. See the linked question or the Wikipedia article for more faithful renderings.

Answer: Although the 7 was the ampersand on IBM's standard keyboard layout, that is hardly universal. The first nine printable characters in ASCII are ! ' # $ % & ' ( ), which should give a good clue as to what the top row of a teletype keyboard looked like. On many early teletypes and terminals (and also, BTW, on the Apple ][), the shift key toggled bit 4 of the character being produced, thus it would turn a 1 (011 0001) into ! (010 0001), and , (010 1100) into < (011 1100). Since the digits 1-9 received consecutive code, so did the characters produced by combining them with the shift key. Shift-7 on those keyboards was apostrophe; the ampersand was shift-6. Other typewriter keyboards also varied considerably in where they put the ampersand. Its association with the number 7 is nowhere near as consistent as the association between 1 and !, 3 and #, 4 and $, or 5 and % which existed in both older computer keyboards and today's US arrangement.


Question: Possible Duplicate: How and why have some words changed to a complete opposite? I have noticed that: horrible means bad terrible means bad horrific means bad So why does terrific mean good?.

Answer: The meaning of terrific has actually changed over time. According to EtymOnline: 1660s, 'frightening,' from L. terrificus 'causing terror or fear,' from terrere 'fill with fear' (see terrible) + root of facere 'to make' (see factitious). Weakened sensed of 'very great, severe' (e.g. terrific headache) appeared 1809; colloquial sense of 'excellent' began 1888. So terrific started out on the same lines as horrific, but then gained a positive colloquial sense in the late 1800s. The phenomenon in which a previously bad word takes on a good connotation is discussed here, in which it is called amelioration. Amelioration (which has occurred for terrific, wicked, luxury) is a type of semantic change. While it is unclear what precisely happened to terrific, there are a few ways in which this change can occur: Linguistic forces Psychological forces Sociocultural forces Cultural/encyclopedic forces You can read more about it here. It has been suggested (though there is little proof) that terrific became 'good' because of an association with the popular media via King Kong. Other than this theory, though, it is clear that terrific underwent some kind of semantic change between the late 1800s and early 1900s. In 1930 Popular Science was still using the term to mean something 'frightening', and by the 1940s it was used mostly to mean 'good'.


Question: I'm looking for an idiom or expression that means someone just makes frustrating or disappointing remarks. Maybe some of you have watched the TV cartoon 'The adventures of Gulliver' in which there was as a character named 'Glum'. He was all the time pessimistic about everything and used statements like: 'We'll never make it'; 'We'll never get out of here alive'; and 'We're doomed.' I want to use that idiom or expression in examples like this: Husband: After getting my promotion, I will take you to a fantastic trip. Wife: Oh, stop talking nonsense! I know It won't never happen, it's impossible you get a promotion. Husband: You remind me of 'Glum'! All the time _____ (i.e. acting like Glum, just having a gloomy outlook on everything). Please stop using such remarks and be a little optimistic! I have found wet blanket for describing such people. PS: We Iranians use an expression that literally says 'to read a frustrating or disappointing verse'. So in above example, the husband might reply like this: Hey Glum, the only thing you know is reading a frustrating/ disappointing verse! (Sometimes we call these people 'Glum'.).

Answer:
I've got a gut feeling that this question is a duplicate, but 'naysayer' fits in your context: a person who habitually expresses negative or pessimistic views: 'Despite a general feeling that things were going well, a few naysayers tried to cast gloom. [Dictionary.com]