7 ms·

I didn't think @ took on the "at" meaning until email came around.

• tsimionescu 3y ago
  What do you think it meant before that?
  • narag 3y ago
    Arroba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arroba
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • syockit 3y ago
    As for me, I was taught it meant "alias", used when introducing nickname together with real name.
• johannes1234321 3y ago
  The oldest trace of @ being used to mean "at" can be traced to typeriters for commerce around 1880, where it was used as "5 apples @ 10 p" meaning "5 apples at 10 pence each." At least that's what German Wikipedia Claims while the corresponding paragraph in english Wikipedia is short. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-Zeichen https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-Zeichen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign
  • jfk13 3y ago
    The formal name of the Unicode character U+0040 '@' is, in fact, COMMERCIAL AT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#Unicode https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At_sign#Unicode
    • Sanzig 3y ago
      It's also the "a commercial" in Quebec French [1]. Despite lacking the accent on the A (à), the intention of the A is to stand in for the single letter French word "à" (at) [2]. [1] https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/fiche-gdt/fiche/8352403/a-commercial https://vitrinelinguistique.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/fiche-gdt/fiche/... [2] https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/fr/cles-de-la-redaction/a-commercial https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/fr/cles-de-la-reda...
  • gattilorenz 3y ago
    More recently (but still 1968, before email): "In ALGOL 68, the @ symbol is brief form of the at keyword; it is used to change the lower bound of an array. For example: arrayx[@88] refers to an array starting at index 88."
  • d-lisp 3y ago
    French wikipedia traces the usage of @ to signify "à" (at) back to Renaissance !
• eesmith 3y ago
  RFC 20 shows "@" defined as "commercial at" in 1969. https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20.html https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc20.html . That was two years before Tomlinson used it for email addressing. EDIT: "Creation of Computer Input in an Expanded Character Set" at https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/download/2928/2547/ https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/download/292... from 1968, p112, describes it simply as "at". EDIT #2: "TRANSLATION FROM MONOTYPE TAPE TO GRADE 2 BRAILLE" at p83 of https://archive.org/details/researchbulletin05lesl/page/82/mode/2up?q=%22at+sign%22 https://archive.org/details/researchbulletin05lesl/page/82/m... from 1964 describes that symbol as the '"at" sign'. I think that is early enough to say that email did not influence the "at" meaning but rather the other way around.
• aidenn0 3y ago
  There are claims it comes from the latin "ad" similar to how & comes from the latin "et" but the etymology is far less certain, with the french à being another possible source. What I can't find is when it was first used in the US for indicating home-team for sports. E.g. [1] where there is vs. or @ depending on whether it is a home or away game. I suspect it's relatively modern, but not sure how far back it goes. 1: https://www.mlb.com/redsox/schedule/2023-09 https://www.mlb.com/redsox/schedule/2023-09