ampersand

The "Roman" ampersand on the left is stylised, but the "italic" one on the right is clearly similar to "et".

Meanings

A mondegreen of and per se and, meaning “and by itself & (the character)”, which is how the symbol ⟨&⟩ was originally referred to in English. This formulation is due to the old practice in schools whereby, when reciting the alphabet, the ⟨&⟩ sign was treated as a 27th letter (read as “and”), and any letter that could also be used as a word in itself (⟨A⟩, ⟨I⟩, ⟨O⟩ and, at the time, ⟨&⟩) was preceded by the Latin expression per se. Thus the end of the recitation would be: “X, Y, Z and per se and”. This last phrase eventually became ampersand, and the term was in common English usage by around 1837.

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