tilde en · NOUN
Pronunciation
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish tilde, from Latin titulus (“superscript”) or from tildar. Doublet of titer/titre, title, titlo, tittle, and titulus. Compare Portuguese til.
Meanings
-
A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation. ▸ In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩ is a palatalized ⟨n⟩, for example in ⟨cañón⟩.
California, like several other states, prohibits the use of diacritical marks or accents on official documents. That means no tilde (~), no accent grave (`), no umlaut (¨) and certainly no cedilla (¸).
2015 April 11, Tovin Lapan, “California birth certificates and accents: O’Connor alright, Ramón and José is not”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 04 Apr 2025:
-
A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation. ▸ In Portuguese, ⟨ã⟩ and ⟨õ⟩ are nasalized vowels, for example in ⟨canção⟩.
The tilde was used similarly in Portuguese on vowels to show that the letter bearing the tilde should be pronounced nasally.
2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 162:
- A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation. ▸ The Vietnamese tone mark dấu ngã, which is placed above a vowel to indicate a creaky rising tone (thanh ngã).
- A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation. ▸ The apex, a curved diacritic used in the 17th century to mark final nasalization in the early Vietnamese alphabet. It was an adoption of the Portuguese tilde.
-
A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
swung dash A stock keyboard character, used in mathematics as the sign of similarity (a ~ b) and in lexicography as a sign of repetition. The same sign has been used in symbolic logic to indicate negation, but to avoid confusion, the angular negation symbol (¬) is preferred. Not to be confused with the tilde.
1992, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style:
- A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle. ▸ The character encoded as decimal 126 in the 1967 ASCII character set, and later in the 1992 Unicode character set.
- A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle. ▸ A punctuation mark that indicates range (from a number to another number). This use is common in Asia, where the symbol in this case is also called a wave dash.
- A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle. ▸ In lexicography, the ⟨~⟩ symbol is used used to indicate the repetition of the topical word or item. In this case, the symbol is also called a swung dash.
- A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle. ▸ May be used to represent approximation, in English prose and in mathematics. For example, “My dog weighs ~30 pounds.”
- A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle. ▸ An alternate form of the logical negation operator, which is usually written as ¬.
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| tildes | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Deriveds
undertilde · zilde · overtilde · middle tilde
Relateds
swung dash · apex · hyphen · ~ · ASCII · positioned in middle height of line
Translations (59)
es tilde (diacritical mark) · hu tilde (diacritical mark) · cs tilda (diacritical mark) · ckb کەشە (diacritical mark) · ca titlla (character) · is bylgja (diacritical mark) · ru ти́льда (diacritical mark) · vi dấu mềm (diacritical mark) · de Schlangenlinie (diacritical mark) · ru ти́льда (character) · fi tilde (character) · cmn 波浪符 (diacritical mark) · cmn ~ (diacritical mark) · sv tilde (diacritical mark) · mk ти́лда (character) · fi tilde (diacritical mark) · ca titlla (diacritical mark) · cs vlnovka (diacritical mark) · cmn 波形號 /波形号 (diacritical mark) · hu hullám (diacritical mark) · vi dấu sóng (character) · et tilde (diacritical mark) · uk ти́льда (character) · sh tilda (diacritical mark) · he זַרְקָא (diacritical mark) · pt til (character) · pl tylda (character) · de Tilde (diacritical mark) · es virgulilla (diacritical mark) · da tilde (diacritical mark) · el περισπωμένη (diacritical mark) · cmn 波浪號 /波浪号 (diacritical mark) · nl tilde (diacritical mark) · nl tilde (character) · bg ти́лда (diacritical mark) · tl tilde (diacritical mark) · cy tild (diacritical mark) · cs vlnovka (character) · el περισπωμένη (character) · cy tild (character) · it tilde (diacritical mark) · mk ти́лда (diacritical mark) · fr tilde (diacritical mark) · ja チルダ (diacritical mark) · ro tildă (diacritical mark) · hu hullámvonal (diacritical mark) · eo tildo (diacritical mark) · he גַּל (diacritical mark) · fi aaltoviiva (diacritical mark) · de Tilde (character) · ar تِلْدَة (diacritical mark) · es tilde (character) · pl tylda (diacritical mark) · vi dấu ngã (tone mark) · mi tire (diacritical mark) · fi aaltoviiva (character) · pt til (diacritical mark) · uk ти́льда (diacritical mark) · cmn ∼ (diacritical mark)