Orphaned Response

[ajs]

> When speaking of the symbol '!' in different contexts what do people
> say?  Examples...

Since great minds think alike, you know this one has come up before.
Here is a (reposting) of "Terminal Mumps".

	TERMINAL MUMPS:  Popular and Bizarre Character Names


	Summarized from USENET articles, circa 1983.
	Single characters listed in ASCII order, followed by multiples.
	For each character, "official" names appear first, thence others
	in order of popularity (more or less).


	!   exclamation point, exclamation, bang, factorial, excl, ball-bat,
	    smash, shriek, cuss, wow, hey
	!?  interrobang (as one overlapped character)
	"   double quote, quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears
	#   pound sign, number sign, sharp, crunch, mesh, hex, hash,
	    flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, octothorp (from
	    Bell System)
	$   dollar sign, currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC),
	    escape (from TOPS-10), ding, big-money
	%   percent sign, percent, mod, double-oh-seven
	&   ampersand, amper, and, address (from C), andpersand
	'   apostrophe, single quote, quote, prime, tick, irk, pop, spark
	()  open/close parenthesis, left/right parenthesis, paren/thesis,
	    parenthisey, unparenthisey, open/close round bracket, ears,
	    so/already, wax/wane
	*   asterisk, star, splat, wildcard, gear, dingle
	+   plus sign, plus, add, cross, intersection
	,   comma, tail
	-   hyphen, dash, minus sign, worm
	.   period, dot, decimal point, radix point, point, full stop, spot
	/   virgule, slash, stroke, slant, diagonal, solidus, over, slat
	:   colon, two-spot
	;   semicolon, semi, hybrid
	<>  angle brackets, left/right angle, less/greater than, read
	    from / write to, from/into, from/toward, in/out, comesfrom/
	    gozinta (all from UNIX), funnel, brokets, crunch/zap, suck/blow
	=   equal sign, equals, quadrathorp, gets, half-mesh
	?   question mark, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh, quark
	@   at sign, at, each, vortex, whorl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail,
	    ape, cat
	V   vee, book
	[]  square brackets, left/right bracket, bracket/unbracket, bra/ket,
	    square/unsquare, U turns
	\   reversed virgule, backslash, bash, backslant, backwhack, backslat,
	    escape (from UNIX)
	^   circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to
	    the power of"), fang
	_   underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm
	`   grave accent, grave, backquote, left quote, open quote, backprime,
	    unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, back tick, push
	{}  open/close brace, left/right brace, brace/unbrace, curly bracket,
	    curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, embrace/bracelet
	|   vertical bar, bar, or, v-bar, spike, pipe, gozinta, thru,
	    pipesinta (last four from UNIX)
	~   tilde, swung dash, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, enyay

	/*  slashterisk
	*/  asterslash
	>>  cat-astrophe