Dictionaries › English

backslash

Pronunciation: /ˈbækˌslæʃ/

The English word “backslash” has 3 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The punctuation mark \ (a left-leaning diagonal line). (Common uses include (1) use as a delimiter in filepaths and (2) use as an escape character to mark literals.)
  2. The punctuation mark /; a slash, forward slash.

verb

  1. To escape (a metacharacter) by prepending a backslash that serves as an escape character, thereby forming an escape sequence.

Etymology

From back + slash, because it is a slash “leaning back” against the direction of writing (in writing lines from left to right), in contrast to the more common (forward) slash / (“solidus, oblique, diagonal”). The actual direction of (hand-)writing these marks can be reversed, when writing from left to right, top to baseline: the backslash forwards, the (forward) slash backwards. The naming can be…

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “backslash” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.