Learners of Irish may come across this unusual symbol ┐ when studying the language. But what is it and what does it mean? Simply put, it’s a Tironian et and means agus (and). The symbol itself comes from Tironian notes, a system of shorthand invented by Tiro (who died in 4 BC).
Note: Sometimes people use the number 7 to indicate this if they don’t have access to it on their devices or to simply save space instead of writing agus.
Tiro’s shorthand system initially consisted of around 4,000 symbols, later expanded by others to 5,000 symbols. During the medieval period, European monasteries took up Tiro’s notations, further developing the system to about 13,000 signs. It is one of the most enduring shorthand systems in history.
As noted a few Tironian symbols are still used today, particularly the ⁊ which is used in Ireland and Scotland to mean ‘and’ (agus in Irish and agusan in Scottish Gaelic).
Below is a snippet of Stories from Keating’s History of Ireland by Osborn Bergin. As you can see there many examples of the Tironian script in this text:
Below is another example from my own shelf:
You may also spot the ┐ on our green Irish post boxes:
Or on signage:
Other notes:
- Jan Tschichold’s Formenwandlungen der Et-Zeichen has a page on the historical varieties.
- It looks like but isn’t the ligature koto found in Japanese (ヿ)
- If you’d like to set up the Tironian et ┐ on your phone/keyboard, you’ll probably need to make a shortcut for it. The Unicode is U+2510
- The lead image is from Wikimedia Commons and is described as follows: “Bilingual Irish-English sign for a horse-drawn Jaunting car for tourists, with the Tironean ‘et’,’7′, for the Irish ‘agus’ (‘and’)”