tilde

Borrowed from Spanish tilde, from Latin titulus (“superscript”) or from tildar. Doublet of titer/titre, title, titlo, tittle, and titulus. Compare Portuguese til.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɪldə/, /ˈtɪldi/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪldə

tilde (plural tildes)

1. A diacritical mark ⟨˜⟩ placed above a letter to modify its pronunciation.
   1. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩ is a palatalized ⟨n⟩, for example in ⟨cañón⟩.
   2. In Portuguese, ⟨ã⟩ and ⟨õ⟩ are nasalized vowels, for example in ⟨canção⟩.
      • 2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 162:

        The tilde was used similarly in Portuguese on vowels to show that the letter bearing the tilde should be pronounced nasally.

   3. Another name for the Vietnamese tone mark dấu ngã, which is placed above a vowel to indicate a creaky rising tone (thanh ngã).
   4. Another name for 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.
2. 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.
   • 1992, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style:

     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.

   1. The character encoded as decimal 126 in the 1967 ASCII character set, and later in the 1992 Unicode character set.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.
   4. May be used to represent approximation, in English prose and in mathematics. For example, “My dog weighs ~30 pounds.”
   5. (logic) An alternate form of the logical negation operator, which is usually written as ¬.

In reference works from the 1950's and earlier (i.e., pre-ASCII), the second meaning of the word “tilde” is not attested. For example, in The Oxford English Dictionary (1933) and Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary (1956), only the meaning of “tilde” as a diacritic is attested.

In the 1967 ASCII standard, the Tilde character was specified to look like a free-floating tilde diacritic (˜), and was intended to be used as a diacritic, by printing it over letters (using overprinting on a paper based computer terminal). In later years, the character was repurposed by users to serve as the symbol ⟨~⟩, and many fonts were changed to match this new de-facto definition. Hence, the word “tilde” entered English as a name for the ⟨~⟩ symbol.

• middle tilde
• overtilde
• undertilde
• zilde

• ASCII
• hyphen
• swung dash – Specific type of tilde, positioned in middle height of line.
• apex – visually similar diacritic in Middle Vietnamese that is often confused with the tilde
• ~

• lited, tiled

tilde f (plural tildes)

1. (orthography) accent

• acentu

tilde

1. locative singular of til

• Audio:

  (file)

tilde

1. inflection of tillen:
   1. singular past indicative
   2. (dated or formal) singular past subjunctive

• leidt

From Spanish tilde.

• IPA^(key): /ˈtilde/, [ˈt̪ilde̞]
• Rhymes: -ilde
• Syllabification^(key): til‧de
• Hyphenation^(key): til‧de

tilde

1. tilde

• aaltoviiva

• “tilde”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 3 July 2023

• IPA^(key): /tild/

• Audio:

  (file)

tilde m (plural tildes)

1. tilde

• “tilde”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• délit, ledit

tilde

1. tilde

• IPA^(key): /ˈtil.de/
• Rhymes: -ilde
• Hyphenation: tìl‧de

tilde m or f (plural tildi)

1. tilde (all senses)
2. (typography) tilde, squiggle

• IPA^(key): /ˈtilde/ [ˈt̪il̪.d̪e]

• Audio (Colombia):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ilde
• Syllabification: til‧de

Deverbal from tildar or from Latin titulus, possibly through an Old Catalan or Old Provençal intermediate (accounting for the final -e instead of -o).^[1]

tilde f or (less commonly) m (plural tildes)

1. accent mark, i.e. acute accent

   Synonym: acento ortográfico

2. tilde

   Synonym: virgulilla

3. criticism, censure

• In Spanish, the term tilde refers to a diacritic in general (including the tilde on top of ñ) but it is primarily used to designate the acute accent, as in á. The term virgulilla is used to specifically refer to the tilde on top of ñ.

• → English: tilde
• → Japanese: チルダ (chiruda)
• → Polish: tylda
• → Russian: ти́льда (tílʹda)
• → Serbo-Croatian: ти̑лда / tȋlda
• → Turkish: tilde

• acento diacrítico, when used to distinguish “el” from “él”, for instance

tilde

1. inflection of tildar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

• “tilde”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024

Borrowed from Spanish tilde, with semantic loan from English tilde.

• (Standard Tagalog) IPA^(key): /ˈtilde/ [ˈt̪il.d̪ɛ]
• Rhymes: -ilde
• Syllabification: til‧de

tilde (Baybayin spelling ᜆᜒᜎ᜔ᜇᜒ)

1. tilde
2. accent mark

   Synonym: tuldik

• “tilde”, in KWF Diksiyonaryo ng Wikang Filipino, Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino, 2024
• “tilde”, in Pambansang Diksiyonaryo | Diksiyonaryo.ph, Manila, 2018

Borrowed from Spanish tilde.

• IPA^(key): [tilde]

tilde (definite accusative tildeyi, plural tildeler)

1. tilde