Amper's *and*

[Tom Stanton]

At 01:10 AM 6/3/97 -0300, Vaska wrote:
>>From your resident keeper of OED lore: seems the word itself is a corruption
>of "and per se-- and," the old way of spelling and naming the character &.
>Yawn.
>
>John Mascaro asked:
>> I don't have a dictionary with me so I am wondering if anyone
>> knows the etymology of the word? Or did I miss it in an earlier post?

The ampersand is a special ligature for "et" from "et cetera." I don't have
my type books handy so I dunno about the "and per se" but that makes
sense.