<Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The tilde (/ ˈtɪldə /; _̃ or ~) is a grapheme with several uses . The name of the character came into English from Spanish and from Portuguese, which in turn came from the Latin titulus, meaning "title" or "superscription ." </P> <P> The reason for the name was that it was originally written over a letter as a scribal abbreviation, as a "mark of suspension", shown as a straight line when used with capitals . Thus the commonly used words Anno Domini were frequently abbreviated to A Dñi, an elevated terminal with a suspension mark placed over the "n". Such a mark could denote the omission of one letter or several letters . This saved on the expense of the scribe's labour and the cost of vellum and ink . Medieval European charters written in Latin are largely made up of such abbreviated words with suspension marks and other abbreviations; only uncommon words were given in full . The tilde has since been applied to a number of other uses as a diacritic mark or a character in its own right . These are encoded in Unicode at U + 0303 ◌ ̃ Combining Tilde and U + 007E ~ Tilde (as a spacing character), and there are additional similar characters for different roles . In lexicography, the latter kind of tilde and the swung dash (⁓) are used in dictionaries to indicate the omission of the entry word . </P>

What is the wavy symbol on the keyboard