Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A diacritical mark ( ~ ) placed over the letter n in Spanish to indicate the palatal nasal sound (ny), as in cañon, or over a vowel in Portuguese to indicate nasalization, as in lã, pão.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A diacritic mark (˜) placed over the letter n in Spanish to indicate that it is sounded as a palatal n, or very nearly like n followed by y, as in señor, pronounced sã˙nyôr′ , cañon, pronounced känyôn′ , and hence in English written canyon. This sound is represented in Portuguese by nh, in Italian and French by gn. The mark ˜, also written as a straight dash, like the macron, ¯, was originally a small n, ñ representing nn, as in
año for anno, from Latin annus. The mark was much used for n or m in medieval mannscripts, and hence in early printed books, being put above the preceding letter to save space: thus, mõumētū for monumentum. The tilde is also used in the Roman notation of Oriental and other languages: thus, ñ for the Sanskrit palatal nasal. It is sometimes used by analogy over l to indicate l followed by y (Spanish and French ll, Portuguese lh, Italian gl).
Wiktionary
- n. The grapheme of character ~.
- n. A key found on some types of keyboards.
- n. logic The character used to represent negation, usually ~ or ¬.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The accentual mark placed over n, and sometimes over l, in Spanish words [thus, ñ, �], indicating that, in pronunciation, the sound of the following vowel is to be preceded by that of the initial, or consonantal, y.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a diacritical mark (~) placed over the letter n in Spanish to indicate a palatal nasal sound or over a vowel in Portuguese to indicate nasalization
Etymologies
- From Spanish tilde, from Latin titulus ("superscript"). (Wiktionary)
- Spanish, alteration of obsolete Catalan title, from Latin titulus, superscription. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The tilde is the ~, probably located at the upper left of your keyboard.”
“Far too many people mistakenly refer to this key as the tilde (~) key because the tilde is the shifted character over the accent grave on standard US keyboards.”
“It's called a tilde, and it lets you turn the gravity off.”
“And I had one other idea convoed to me through Etsy... a "tilde" which is that squiggly punctuation mark used in the Spanish language over an "N".”
“Use a "tilde" e.g.: "~infosys" finds IT companies similar to Infosys 13”
“I need a better domain, one without a tilde which is a pain to type, though once you add it to your Blackberry bookmarks it’s just a click.”
“To type the ñ Press the shift key and the tilde key ~ nothing will happen until you press the n key, when you do it in sequence you will get the ñ.”
“ALABAMA ADOPTS SB 1070-STYLE LAW - The state known far and wide for its history of treating people who don't look like Pat Boone with the utmost respect continued to honor that tradition today when its governor signed a bill that will basically create an environment where white people won't want to be seen near anyone with a tilde in their name.”
The Huffington Post: HUFFPOST HILL - Gingrich Staffers Break Free
“In mine all the Spanish words that had a tilde were misspelled -- a quirk of the computer code apparently.”
“The law prohibits individuals from transporting or in anyway "concealing" undocumented immigrants, requires schools to check the citizenship status of students and, generally speaking, requires non-Hispanic citizens to scream "COOTIES!" every time they find themselves in the presence a caramel-skinned individual or see a tilde on a government form.”
The Huffington Post: HUFFPOST HILL - Congress Turns The Sky Into Milton Friedman's Playground
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tilde’.
-
Realia from Everywhere
Culturally defined terms and expressions from the four corners of the world
fjord, mistral steppe, tornado, tsunami, polder, kiwi, koala, sequoia, Abominable Snowman, paprika, spaghetti, empanada and 299 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 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...
-
zanshin's Words
gargoyle, ennui, paradigm, aardvark, verisimilitude, ghoti, tenacity, nescience, guillemet, squonk, maven, moxie and 210 more...
-
Favorite Tangible Object Words
Trimming the "Chained Bear's Favorites" list so I don't crash people's computers... like my own...
castanets, whaup, budgie, wallabies, ring-wraith, hobbit, chinchilla, guano, merganser, phalarope, phalarope, curlew and 138 more...
-
wreckingball's Words
reprehensible, problematize, crepuscular, deleterious, pestilent, strumpet, draggletail, interrobang, meretricious, systematize, schadenfreude, capricious and 443 more...
-
katiad's Words
exquisite, obnoxious, noxious, extravaganza, whirlwind, whirling, wild, spinster, existential, chaos, zephyr, blasphemy and 310 more...
-
mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
-
Damieng's Words
lupine, sapor, boz imp, imp, ovine, saracen, haberdashery, tiebar, shill, cutler, cutaway, lucite and 218 more...
-
Favorite Five-Letter Words
Just what it sounds like. My favorites. Five letters.
ennui, barfy, samba, schwa, beefy, chunk, queef, spasm, skulk, bowel, elbow, fruit and 235 more...
-
fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
-
Dewdrops
Sparkling words I love :3
photograph, maelstrom, necromancy, pristine, cremation, euphamism, railway, xeric, journey, smear, crypt, gangrene and 43 more...
-
Words Relating to Words
asterisk, ampersand, sonnet, foreshadowing, soliloquy, umlaut, spoonerism, guillemet, tilde, vernacular, parlance, onomatopoeia and 17 more...
-
points, accents, and curious characters
terms for punctuation, accents, typography, etc.
guillemet, ellipsis, tilde, diaeresis, dieresis, umlaut, virgule, pilcrow, alinea, etc., hyphen, em dash and 16 more...
-
a little carrot over the 'a'
being the names of diacritical marks
cedilla, accent, caron, breve, circumflex, macron, diaeresis, dot, hook, horn, ogonek, ring and 5 more...
-
The Glyphs & How to Name Them
Being a list of the proper names of glyphs, both exotic and common, found in the typographer's toolbox.
ogonek, macron, horn, hook, dot, diaeresis, umlaut, circumflex, cedilla, inverted breve, breve, double grave, grave and 60 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for tilde.

Prolagus Everybody stand back! I know regular expressions. :D Jan 6, 2009
applefat =~ (not ~=) is used in the computer language Perl, and acts as the "binding operator" for regular expressions. Jan 6, 2009
whichbe also known as the 'swung dash'. Apr 22, 2008
chained_bear It's searchable online, but I believe you have to be a subscriber to use it. My employer is a subscriber and I use it frequently at work.
They do have an RSS feed (or is that redundant?) for a Word of the Day, which I've never used but it seems like it would be fun. Maybe I'll try it. Feb 13, 2007
uselessness I stand corrected. I need to pick up the OED. Or is it searchable online? Feb 13, 2007
chained_bear I've always pronounced it "tildeh," or "tild-uh," as seanahan listed it. I have only ever known it as the symbol inkhorn cited so I can't speak to that usage, though OED lists its secondary meaning as "a symbol in Math. and Logic, chiefly to indicate negation." Feb 13, 2007
seanahan Twiddle is a thing used in math. I've heard the pronunciations "tild", "tildee", and "tild-uh". I can't remember where I saw ~= used to be not equals, so I'll have to track it down. I've also seen ~ used to be about equals. Feb 4, 2007
uselessness I always thought that use meant approximately, not not. Handwritten on paper you'd see one tilde drawn above another, to make a squiggly equals sign. It's the visual cue for for "fuzzy" equality, used when the answer is close to a given value but probably not exactly that value. Just like the analog counterpart to != is an equals sign with a slash through it, evoking a "no parking" symbol to nullify the operator. Then again, we all tend to draw symbols differently, and maybe use different visual cues; so I'm not saying you're wrong. I just haven't seen that before.
By the way, let's set the record straight... is it pronounced "tild" or "tildee?" Or "twiddle," which is another thing I've never seen before? Feb 4, 2007
seanahan This symbol is used in various places as a "not" symbol, sometimes pronounced as "twiddle", with "~=" akin to "!=". Feb 3, 2007
chained_bear There's a cool article I happened to find and have no affiliation with whatsoever. http://diveintomark.org/archives/2002/10/04/history_of_the_tilde Feb 3, 2007
inkhorn Tilde Accent: jalapeño Dec 19, 2006