commercial at

n. @, at sign, symbol that is used to signify the word "at" (especially in email addresses, also known as "strudel", "commat" and more)

The at sign (@, read aloud in English as "at") is a typographic symbol used as an abbreviation for "at" in accounting and commercial invoices, in statements such as "7 widgets @ $2 ea. = $14". More recently, the at symbol has become ubiquitous because of its use in e-mail addresses.It is often referred to informally as the at symbol, the at sign, or just at. In other languages, the symbol may have a different name (see below). It has the official name commercial at in the ANSI/CCITT/Unicode character encoding standards. However, no formal English term has been officially assigned to this character.
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<character> "@". ASCII code 64. Common names: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl, INTERCAL: whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, amphora. ITU-T: commercial at.
The @ sign is used in an electronic mail address to separate the local part from the hostname.
It is ironic that @ has become a trendy mark of Internet awareness since it is a very old symbol, derived from the latin preposition "ad" (at).
Giorgio Stabile, a professor of history in Rome, has traced the symbol back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman mercantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on 1536-05-04.
In Dutch it is called "apestaartje" (little ape-tail), in German "affenschwanz" (ape tail). The French name is "arobase". In Spain and Portugal it denotes a weight of about 25 pounds, the weight and the symbol are called "arroba". Italians call it "chiocciola" (snail).
See @-party.
(2003-04-28)