Hold up, have you ever heard about the magical era when the alphabet was more than just A to Z? Yes, apparently, there were 27 letters at one point, and people are just now catching up to this mind-boggling fact!
Imagine this: you’re back in kindergarten, singing the ABC song, and suddenly there’s an extra letter popping up after Z. Confusing, right? Well, that was once a reality, as the alphabet used to have a 27th character that many of us never knew about.
And yes, before you start thinking we made this up, there was genuinely an additional letter that was part of the alphabet.
Over on Reddit, this revelation has been stirring quite the conversation. In the subreddit r/GameTheorists, a user linked this quirky historical tidbit to the game Five Nights at Freddy’s while discussing a puzzle in the game.
The user shared, “In that video, matpat mentions that there are only 26 letters in the alphabet so the first attempt is busted. I’m here to tell you that there IS a 27th letter in the alphabet.”
Indeed, while the current English alphabet concludes at Z, there was once a time it extended a bit further.
Historically, up until 1835 as noted by Britannica, the alphabet included an extra symbol right after Z. It was none other than the ‘&’ symbol, also known as the ‘ampersand’.
Why was it part of the alphabet, you ask? According to Dictionary.com, it’s all thanks to how students recited the alphabet. They would end with “X, Y, Z and per se and” – ‘per se’ meaning ‘by itself’. So essentially, they were announcing “X, Y, Z and itself and.”
It’s easy to see why the term ‘ampersand’ caught on once you speed through ‘And per se and’ a few times.
The ampersand wasn’t just hanging around for fun; it was fully functional, representing both the word ‘and’ and the Latin word ‘et’, transforming ‘etc.’ into ‘&c’.
By the late 19th century, however, the ampersand fizzled out from the alphabet lineup, and it’s only recently that a wave of stunned netizens are realizing it was ever part of it.
One perplexed X user posted, “The barback just looked me dead in my f**king eyeballs and asked ‘has their always been 26 letters in the alphabet?’ and before I could answer, the other bartender goes ‘there’s 27.’ What the f**k is going on HERE.”
Another chimed in, “How old were you when you found out that ‘&’ was once the 27th letter of english alphabet?”
A third was simply floored: “Whhhhaaaaaatttttttt.”
And a Reddit user humorously noted, “You lost me at ‘back in 1835’.”
It turns out that the ampersand isn’t the only letter to have come and gone – the alphabet’s roster has shifted more than once over the centuries, introducing and phasing out several characters.
So, the next time you’re at trivia night, drop this alphabet knowledge and watch the jaws drop. Who knew the ABCs could be so scandalously interesting?