tilde
noun [ C ]
UK
(used when writing some languages) a ~ mark made above a letter, especially n, to show that the letter has a special sound
What does the symbol ~ mean?
Originally Answered: What is the use of the tilde (~) symbol?
It’s got multiple uses.
In some languages, the tilde is used as a diacritical mark ( ˜ ) placed over a letter to indicate a change in pronunciation. For example, Spanish word “uña” is pronounced as ‘unia’. The tilde symbol indicates change of the pronunciation of n to ni. In English, though, tilde isn’t used for that purpose.
In English, it can mean “about” when placed before a number. For example, ~30 means ‘about 30’.
When placed between two numbers, it means the difference between the two numbers. For example, 12~25 = 13. Kind of like a modified subtraction sign(-).
In the IPA(International phonetic alphabet) it can be used to say around a specific sound. For example, //ʊ~ʌ// means around those sounds.
Tilde is used in many programming languages as well. The meaning may vary from programming language to programming language. In C++ and C, the tilde is used as a bitwise operator. In CSS tilde is used in something called ‘Sibling Selector’.
In computer shell programs, it’s also used for various purposes. For example, in Unix based system the tilde indicates user’s home directory.
Other than these,
Double tilde (≈ ) means approximately equal to. For example, a ≈ 30.12 means the value of a is approximately equals to 30.12
Another symbol where tilde is present is this: ≅ . It means ‘similar’ in mathematics. As in geometry to denote that two triangles are similar this sign is used. For example, ΔABC ≅ ΔEFG means the two triangles are similar.
So, tilde is a symbol which is given many different meanings in many different places.
Originally Answered: What does this symbol “~” mean?
That’s a tilde. In Latin and derivatives it used to be placed over a letter to mark a missing one, in the way we do an apostrophe. You can still see them in Spanish punctuation and the French use a similar circumflex - fenêtre (fenestra).
It doesn’t really have much of a job in English. It’s used in dictionaries to mark the omission of the entry word, usually. It’s also used nowadays instead of writing circa when referring to numbers. Circa fifty means more-or-less fifty, and you could write ~50.
One thing it is useful for is for exporting data from databases into a character-separated file for later manipulation. If the database contains a lot of addresses, then there’s a good chance that somebody will have put a comma in there and exporting as a CSV will cock things up mightily.
If you use the tilde as a separator there’s a 99.9% chance that nobody’s put a tilde in there and so your chances are good from the start of getting a clean go.
I like it though. It reminds me a bit of a sine wave.
I blame the EU.