Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- The symbol (¶).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The character ¶, used to mark the beginning of a new paragraph: same as paragraph, 4.
Wiktionary
- n. The paragraph mark ¶.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Print.), obsolete a paragraph mark, ¶.
Etymologies
- Probably an alteration of Middle English pylcrafte, modification of Late Latin paragraphus. (Wiktionary)
- Alteration of Middle English pilcraft, pilcrow, paragraph, alteration (perhaps influenced by Middle English craft, skill, work, piece of work) of Old French paragrafe, pelagraphe, paragraph; see paragraph. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Who knew, for example, that the backward P printer's mark that denotes a paragraph break is called a pilcrow or that the only letters formed in a clockwise direction are m, n, h, k, b, p and r?”
“nyokki: what i did is google the word pilcrow and i saw the symbol and copied it instead of going in character map. hope it makes it easier for you”
“There used to be a clunky paragraph sign known as a pilcrow ; initially it was a C with a slash drawn through it.”
“There is also a deep look at the @ symbol's new-found stardom, the octothorpe enjoying a new lease of life renamed as the "hashtag" in Twitter parlance, and the secretive pilcrow.”
“I'll start with remarks on little known formal names for some punctuation marks. pilcrow: ¶”
“MS Word wants to make anything that looks like a quote mark with a space, tab, or pilcrow in front of it into some kind of open-quote mark.”
“Other terms do it for me too: recently I was reminded by India that the symbol for a paragraph is called a pilcrow.”
“The third type has a pilcrow ¶ but no paragraph break.”
“In this e-text, the second type of paragraph is marked with a pilcrow ¶.”
“In the printed book, some line numbers were shifted to avoid collision with the pilcrow symbol at the beginning of each seven-line stanza.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘pilcrow’.
-
phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pustule, purulence, pushful, purser, purpureal, putative, purpure, purpresture, purloin, purline, purlieu, purlicue and 1766 more...
-
Marks
names of punctuation marks, accent marks, and other graphic signs and graphical characters used in printed, written, or digital text.
comma, period, parenthesis, apostrophe, colon, semicolon, slash, stroke, brackets, dash, em dash, en dash and 71 more...
-
♥
ambrosia, inamorata, gossamer, lily-white, hummingbird, roucoulement, poppy, daisy, calypso, lunula, lamb, dove and 1526 more...
-
work these into conversation
Challenge!
legerdemain, polysemic, rupestrian, callipygian, oscitancy, numen, lucubration, asperity, amalgam, apposite, wastrel, eleemosynary and 208 more...
-
All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
anacoluthon, defenestration, hypnopomp, hypnagogue, idioglossia, panopticon, tatterdemalion, abalone, caltrop, miasma, paroxysm, smalt and 475 more...
-
Words
teeter, headlong, reprobate, canard, ersatz, prevaricate, trenchant, minatory, fatuous, stultify, vitiate, fulminate and 135 more...
-
Appellations
States of ment.
off kilter, fervent, nonchalant, exuberant, turbid, verbose, eloquent, vicarious, gallivant, orotund, amalgamate, accentuate and 285 more...
-
exlotuseater's Words
autocthonous, anacoluthon, benthic, bactrian, caryatid, chiastic, dryad, dromedary, effulgent, elixir, fricative, fungible and 145 more...
-
colleen's words
yellow, green, pie, blue, fur, people, incense, book, brown, avuncular, mountain, fog and 1316 more...
-
wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
-
It Has a Name??
Yes. Yes it does.
aglet, armsaye, scroop, rowel, ferrule, rasceta, chanking, philtrum, frenulum, keeper, agelast, punt and 285 more...
-
wordhoard
dilatory, ataraxia, hermit, cabana, hut, dome, vestigial, porcine, crapulous, usufruct, curmudgeon, bombastic and 229 more...
-
sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
-
C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
-
the omnibus
preponderance, idioglossia, acumen, heteronym, flux, anacoluthon, metonymy, impetus, constellation, exegesis, revelatory, cloistered and 877 more...
-
learning
A list of words whose meanings I am learning, either because a) I don't know the meaning b) I know the meaning, but could stand to better appreciate certain inflections or secondary meanings or c) ...
louche, educe, loam, cob, sclerotic, palliate, axial, syndicalist, ecumenical, sally, fatuous, parvenu and 1381 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for pilcrow.
colleen ¶ Dec 26, 2007
serenete So that's what it's called! :) Sep 19, 2007
reesetee Also called the paragraph sign or the alinea. A typographical character commonly used to denote individual paragraphs, it resembles a backward P. Sep 14, 2007