n. (also star) 1. In historical phonology, a symbol used to mark an unattested earlier form which has been reconstructed on the basis of some evidence, as when English father is derived from an unattested Proto-Germanic *fadar, or when English fierce...

// n. 1. A symbol conventionally indicating that the material following it is grammatically ill-formed, e.g., *She smiled me. Cf. question mark, per cent sign, hash mark. NOTE: this convenient and universally used notation has apparently been...

Typographical symbol used in linguistics in two ways: (a) to mark an unattested protoform ( proto) which has been hypothesized using comparative reconstruction or internal reconstruction, e.g. Proto-Indo European ‘horse’; or (b) to...

n. See...

An asterisk (*) is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star (Latin astrum). Computer scientists and mathematicians often pronounce it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*...