Ampersand

Read an ampersand aloud and you are saying the Latin word et, meaning “and”. Roman writers ran the e and the t together when writing quickly, and the joined form already turns up in graffiti of the first century AD.

English-speaking schoolchildren once recited the alphabet with & as its last entry, ending “and per se and”: the sign by itself stands for the word “and”. Said fast and often enough, those last words blurred into the single name we use now.