The tilde (/tld/, /tldi/; or ~ ) is a grapheme with several uses.

. The name of the character comes from Portuguese and Spanish, from the Latin titulusmeaning "title" or "superscription", though the term "tilde" has evolved and now has a different meaning in linguistics. Some may refer to it as a "flourish". It was originally written over a letter as a mark of abbreviation, as a "mark of suspension", shown as a straight line when used with capitals. Thus the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to Ao Di an elevated terminal with a suspension mark placed above the "n". Such mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters. This saved on the expense of the scribe's labour and the cost of vellum and ink. Mediaeval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with suspension marks, with few being given in full, generally only uncommon words. It has since acquired a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right. These are encoded in Unicode at U+0303
TILDE COMBINING

and U+007E ~ TILDE (as a spacing character), and there are additional similar characters for different roles. In lexicography,

the latter kind of tilde and the swung dash () are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word. [1]
Contents
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1 Common use 2 Diacritical use

o o o o o o o o o

2.1 Pitch 2.2 Abbreviation 2.3 Nasalization 2.4 Palatal n 2.5 Tone 2.6 International Phonetic Alphabet 2.7 Letter extension 2.8 Other uses 2.9 Precomposed Unicode characters

3 Similar characters 4 ASCII tilde (U+007E) 5 Punctuation

o o

5.1 Range 5.2 Japanese

5.2.1 Unicode and Shift JIS encoding of wave dash

6 Mathematics

6.1 Logic

7 Physics 8 Economics 9 Electronics

10 Computing

o o o o o o

10.1 Directories and URLs 10.2 Computer languages 10.3 Backup filenames 10.4 Microsoft filenames 10.5 Games 10.6 Other uses

11 Juggling notation 12 Keyboards 13 See also 14 References 15 External links

Common use[edit]
This symbol (in English) sometimes means "approximately", such as: "~30 minutes ago" meaning "approximately 30 minutes ago".[2] It can mean "similar to",[3] including "of the same order of magnitude as",[4] such as: x ~ y" meaning that x and y are of the same order of magnitude. Another approximation symbol is , meaning "approximately equal to."[2][3][5][6]

Diacritical use[edit]
In some languages, the tilde is used as a diacritical mark () placed over a letter to indicate a change in pronunciation, such as nasalization.

Pitch[edit]
It was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, as a variant of the circumflex, representing a rise in pitch followed by a return to standard pitch.

Abbreviation[edit]

Carta marina showing Finnish economy, with the captions Hic fabricantur naves andHic fabricantur bombarde abbreviated

Later, it was used to make abbreviations in medieval Latin documents. When an n or m followed a vowel, it was often omitted, and a tilde (i.e., a small n) was placed over the preceding vowel to indicate the missing letter; this is the origin of the use of tilde to indicate nasalization. (Compare the development of the umlaut as an abbreviation of e.) The practice of using the tilde over a

vowel to indicate omission of an n or m continued in printed books in French as a means of reducing text length until the 17th century. It was also used in Portuguese, Catalan and Spanish. The tilde was also used occasionally to make other abbreviations, such as over the letter q ("q") to signify the word que ("that").

Nasalization[edit]
It is also as a small n that the tilde originated when written above other letters, marking a Latin n which had been elided in old Galician-Portuguese. In modern Portuguese it indicates nasalization of the base vowel: mo "hand", from Lat. manu; razes"reasons", from Lat. rationes. This usage has been adopted in the orthographies of several native languages of South America, such as Guarani and Nheengatu, as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and many other phonetic alphabets. For example, is the IPA transcription of the pronunciation of the French place-name Lyon.

In Breton, the symbol after a vowel means that the letter n serves only to give the vowel a nasalised pronunciation, without being itself pronounced, as it normally is. For example an gives the pronunciation [n] whereas a gives [].

Palatal n[edit]
Main article: The tilded n (, ) developed from the digraph nn in Spanish. In this language, is considered a separate letter called ee (IPA: ee ), rather than a letter-diacritic combination; it is placed in Spanish dictionaries between the letters n and o. In addition, the word tilde can refer to any diacritic in this language; for example, the acute accent in Jos is also called a tilde in Spanish.[7] Current languages in which the tilded n () is used for the palatal nasal consonant // include:

Asturian Basque Chamorro language Filipino Galician Guaran Mapudungun Papiamento Quechua Spanish Tetum

Tone[edit]
In Vietnamese, a tilde over a vowel represents a dipping tone (ng).

International Phonetic Alphabet[edit]

In phonetics, a tilde is used as a diacritic either placed above a letter, below it or superimposed onto the middle of it (see International Phonetic Alphabet Diacritics):

A tilde above a letter indicates nasalization, e.g. [], []. A tilde superimposed onto the middle of a letter indicates velarization or pharyngealization, e.g. precomposed unicode character exists, the unicode character U+0334 one.
COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY

. If no can be used to generate

A tilde below a letter indicates laryngealisation, e.g. character U+0330

COMBINING TILDE BELOW

. If no precomposed unicode character exists, the unicode

can be used to generate one.

Letter extension[edit]
In Estonian, the symbol stands for the close-mid back unrounded vowel, and it is considered an independent letter.

Other uses[edit]

Some languages and alphabets use the tilde for other purposes:

Arabic: A symbol resembling the tilde (madda) is used over the letter to become , denoting a long /a/ sound ( ). Guaran: The tilded (note that G/g with tilde is not available as a precomposed glyph in Unicode) stands for the velar nasal consonant. Also, the tilded y () stands for the nasalized upper central rounded vowel Unicode has a combining vertical tilde character, . (U+0484).[citation needed] (U+033E). It is used to indicate middle tone in linguistic transcription of

certain dialects of the Lithuanian language[8] and for transliteration of the Cyrillicpalatalization sign,

Precomposed Unicode characters[edit]

The following characters using the tilde as a diacritic exist as precomposed Unicode characters:

Character Code point

Name

U+00C3

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE

U+00D1

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH TILDE

U+00D5

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE

U+00E3

LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH TILDE

U+00F1

LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE

U+00F5

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE

U+0128

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH TILDE

U+0129

LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE

U+0168

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE

U+0169

LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE

U+019F

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+022C

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND MACRON

U+022D

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND MACRON

U+026B

LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D6C

LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D6D

LATIN SMALL LETTER D WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D6E

LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D6F

LATIN SMALL LETTER M WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D70

LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D71

LATIN SMALL LETTER P WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D72

LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D73

LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH FISHHOOK AND MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D74

LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D75

LATIN SMALL LETTER T WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1D76

LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH MIDDLE TILDE

U+1E1A

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E1B

LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E2C

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER I WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E2D

LATIN SMALL LETTER I WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E4C

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND ACUTE

U+1E4D

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND ACUTE

U+1E4E

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND DIAERESIS

U+1E4F

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH TILDE AND DIAERESIS

U+1E74

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E75

LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE BELOW

U+1E78

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH TILDE AND ACUTE

U+1E79

LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH TILDE AND ACUTE

U+1E7C

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER V WITH TILDE

U+1E7D

LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH TILDE

U+1EAA

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1EAB

LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1EB4

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH BREVE AND TILDE

U+1EB5

LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH BREVE AND TILDE

U+1EBC

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH TILDE

U+1EBD

LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH TILDE

U+1EC4

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1EC5

LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1ED6

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1ED7

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH CIRCUMFLEX AND TILDE

U+1EE0

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH HORN AND TILDE

U+1EE1

LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH HORN AND TILDE

U+1EEE

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH HORN AND TILDE

U+1EEF

LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH HORN AND TILDE

U+1EF8

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y WITH TILDE

U+1EF9

LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH TILDE

U+2C62

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE TILDE

Similar characters