What's the word? If you're online, you'll get it!

So, what's the word? Obviously if you're reading this, you're online. 

This is one word that I have to say, I never heard of, but now, I most likely won't forget it!

That's what's fun about doing "What's the Word?" I learn new words, some are strangely spelled, some are even more strange in how they are pronounced!

This one is both!

I like how this guy talks about how the hashtag bugged him!


I Thought It Was A Pound Sign 

All of my life I have been indifferently been referring to this symbol

(#) as a "number sign" or have been hitting the button right of zero

on a telephone keypad whenever someone told me to hit "pound".

Then suddenly I'm seeing the "number sign" followed by letters and

I was confused and annoyed. 

In the late 1960s or early 1970s somebody at Bell Labs decided to

name the symbol "octothorpe". The specific derivation is uncertain

but the common consensus is that "octo" refers to the symbol's

eight points, though nobody is quite sure of why the word is

concluded with "thorpe".

Some think it has something to do with the athlete "Jim Thorpe" and others point to the English word "thorp" which means "hamlet". Either way, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense - but everyone agrees that "octo" is referring to the eight points.

(finishing reading the article @ link below!)

Did you catch the word? Yep, it's octothorpe!

So, yes, we see it, use it every day online known as hashtags, of course, I'm so old we knew it as a number sign when I was a kid!

The next time you're using a hashtag, how can you now not think of octothorpe?

Add it to your scrabble vocabulary, it just may help you earn your winning points!