Asterisk

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Look up * or asterisk in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The asterisk /ˈæst(ə)rɪsk/ *, from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος, asteriskos, "little star",^[1][2] is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star.

Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). In English, an asterisk is usually five-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces,^[3] and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words, and on the Internet, to indicate a correction to a previous message.

In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication.

History[]

The asteriskos used in an early Greek papyrus.

Early asterisks seen in the margin of Greek papyrus.

The asterisk has already been used as a symbol in ice age cave paintings.^[4] There is also a two thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos, ※, which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated.^[5] Origen is known to have also used the asteriskos to mark missing Hebrew lines from his Hexapla.^[6] The asterisk evolved in shape over time, but its meaning as a symbol used to correct defects remained.

In the Middle Ages, the asterisk was used to emphasize a particular part of text, often linking those parts of the text to a marginal comment.^[7] However, an asterisk was not always used.

One hypothesis to the origin of the asterisk is that it stems from the 5000-year-old Sumerian character dingir,