How to Tell Someone's Age

"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind) 02/24/2017 at 22:52 • Filed to: Thoughts

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This symbol has many names when out of context. Old people will see this and call it a “number sign.” Those that are middle-aged will say “pound sign.” The young folks call it a “#hashtag.” But no matter your age, if you have this sign then you must be sharp, ya see?!

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 22:55

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It’s also a tic-tac-toe board. WHAT NOW, QUIZ

MM54 > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 22:57

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An octothorpe!

I read it as “pound sign” unless it’s before a number, in which case it’s a number sign. If it’s in front of a word, it’s an IRC channel.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:01

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A hashtag is what you should call your receipt when you purchase marijuana from a dispensary.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:01

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kinja’d

Birddog > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/24/2017 at 23:02

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dogisbadob > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/24/2017 at 23:02

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+1 beat me to it

EL_ULY > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:03

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octothorp, yo!

shop-teacher > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:03

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Am middle aged, it’s a pound sign.

Birddog > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:03

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What if I think of Global Thermonuclear War when I see that?

smobgirl > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:03

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IM NOT MIDDLE AGED.

Highlander-Datsuns are Forever > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:04

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Kids these days, they don’t know nothing!

Die-Trying > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 02/24/2017 at 23:09

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it means youre an immature kid at heart........ or so i’ve been told......

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:14

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I see an extremely complicated intersection system that should have been prevented with the use of traffic circles.

Alfalfa > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:21

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So if you’re talking to a musician, there’s just no way of knowing their age.

ttyymmnn > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:21

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I knew all of those meanings, so I must be double sharp.

AMGtech - now with more recalls! > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:22

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#octothorpe

DipodomysDeserti > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 02/24/2017 at 23:26

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What is this magical place you speak of where marijuana can ne bought in stores!?

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > DipodomysDeserti 02/24/2017 at 23:33

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Washington state. There are seriously weed shops on every corner.

Nothing > Wobbles the Mind 02/24/2017 at 23:34

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“Thank you for calling reservationless conferencing. Pleas enter your conference code, followed by the pound sign.”

DipodomysDeserti > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 02/24/2017 at 23:39

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Fuckin’ Arizona, man. We vote out Arpaio, but vote no on recreational marijuana. Makes no sense. I have friends in Seattle and Denver. We were in the university district of Seattle about a year ago and a guy walked past us smoking a J. My daughter goes, “that’s a weird smelling cigar, dad!”

ranwhenparked > Wobbles the Mind 02/25/2017 at 00:40

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I still call it a pound sign, but then I don’t do the Twitter.

Out, but with a W - has found the answer > Wobbles the Mind 02/25/2017 at 04:21

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[...] then you must be sharp, ya see?!

I C what you did there...

TheRealBicycleBuck > Wobbles the Mind 02/25/2017 at 06:57

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What if i have the music in me?

19JRC99 > Wobbles the Mind 02/25/2017 at 08:08

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I’m 17. I called it number sign many years, then kinda used hashtag (but with a dislike of it) and just blurted out pound sign.

CaptDale - is secretly British > Wobbles the Mind 02/25/2017 at 11:58

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!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

On Facebook and Twitter, you tag your friends with the @ symbol and topics with the #. If you see something that says #WordoftheDay, the tweet or post will concern the Word of the Day in some way. But what do you call the # symbol? Where did it come from? Its myriad names and its appearance are intertwined.

The # symbol is commonly called the pound sign, number sign and more recently the hashtag. It is called the pound sign because the symbol comes from the abbreviation for weight, lb, or “libra pondo” literally “pound by weight” in Latin. When writing lb, it was not uncommon for scribes to cross the letters across the top with a line across the top, like a t. See the example below.

The phrase “number sign” arose in Britain because “pound sign” could easily be confused with the British currency. The # symbol is sometimes spoken as the word “number” as in the word “number two pencil.”

But what is its official name? The octothorpe . What does that mean? It’s actually a made-up word. It was invented in the same laboratories where the telephone came from. The scientists at Bell Laboratories modified the telephone keypad in the early 1960s and added the # symbol to send instructions to the telephone operating system. Since the # symbol didn’t have a name, the technicians made one up. They knew it should be called “octo-” something because it has eight ends around the edge. But how to make “octo” into a noun? What happened next is not entirely clear. According to one report, Bell Lab employee Don MacPherson named it after the Olympian Jim Thorpe. Another former employee claims it was a nonsense word that is a joke. Another unverifiable report is much more etymologically satisfying. The Old Norse word “thorpe” meant “farm or field”, so octothorpe literally means “eight fields.”

The word hash predates these other terms but was not very popular until recently. (Maybe because it reminds us of mediocre diner food.) It first referred to stripes on military jackets as early as 1910. In the 1980s, it came to refer to the # symbol. Since the ascent of social media, hashtag has become the favored word for the # symbol.

Similar symbols appear in many other places. Musicians recognize # as the sharp symbol, denoting a note one half step higher. Copy editors see a symbol meaning “space,” as in “add a space between two sentences.” In computer code, the # symbol means that everything that follows is only comment, not instructions.