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Does the _with_ symbol exist?
Posted by toothfish in
22 Jun 2005 — 11:23pm
22 Jun 2005 — 11:23pm
I remember my mother using a symbol in handwritten correspondence that looked like a lower case c with a horizontal line over it that I understood to mean "with". Is this a fanciful reconstruction on my part? Is it part of any standard character set? Here's some context.
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22 Jun 2005 — 11:31pm
It's medical shorthand. Actually it could be general shorthand too. But I know it's medical shorthand. I found my wife using it in a card to her mother. I had to tell her - 'look, your mom isn't going to know what that means'. So no, you are not making it all up.
22 Jun 2005 — 11:37pm
Oh, that makes sense. I guess my medical roots are showing.
Thanks Eben.
23 Jun 2005 — 4:47am
For what it's worth, the medical shorthand refers to the Latin word cum, which means with (as in Magna cum Laude, with High Honors).
23 Jun 2005 — 7:44am
We still haven't answered one of Toothfish's questions. Anybody ever seen this glyph as part of a standard charcter set? For instance, I know there were stenographer machines once ( now? ) - did/do they use this symbol? Is it a part of Unicode fonts?
23 Jun 2005 — 9:30am
I can't speak to its availability as a glyph (although I suppose you could make one with a "c" and a macron), but I do know that it comes from the Latin cum.
Similarly, you sometimes see in the medical field s-macron, meaning "without," from the Latin sin. There's a whole world of interesting medical shorthand, including OS ("left eye") and NPO ("nothing by mouth").
vv
J.O.
Nai tiruvantel ar varyuvantel i Valar tielyanna nu vilya.