tilde
/ˈtɪldə/noun
tilde is spelled T-I-L-D-E: 5 letters and 2 syllables. It appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 75,877th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, tilde means “In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩ is a palatalized ⟨n⟩, for example in ⟨cañón⟩” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of tilde is tildes.
How many letters and syllables are in tilde?
| Letters | 5: T-I-L-D-E |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 2 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 6 million words; the 75,877th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is tilde?
Tilde appears about once in every 6 million words in written English, the 75,877th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce tilde?
- /ˈtɪldə/
- /ˈtɪldi/
Tilde has 2 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-tilde-2.ogg, En-us-tilde.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of tilde
- tildes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does tilde mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩ is a palatalized ⟨n⟩, for example in ⟨cañón⟩.
- 2
In Portuguese, ⟨ã⟩ and ⟨õ⟩ are nasalized vowels, for example in ⟨canção⟩.
- 3
The Vietnamese tone mark dấu ngã, which is placed above a vowel to indicate a creaky rising tone (thanh ngã).
- 4
The apex, a curved diacritic used in the 17th century to mark final nasalization in the early Vietnamese alphabet. It was an adoption of the Portuguese tilde.
- 5
A symbol ⟨~⟩, with various names and uses, also known as swung dash or wave dash. In the computer industry, various other names may be used, such as squiggle and twiddle.
- 6
The character encoded as decimal 126 in the 1967 ASCII character set, and later in the 1992 Unicode character set.
- 7
A punctuation mark that indicates range (from a number to another number). This use is common in Asia, where the symbol in this case is also called a wave dash.
- 8
In lexicography, the ⟨~⟩ symbol is used used to indicate the repetition of the topical word or item. In this case, the symbol is also called a swung dash.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Tilde in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense diacritical mark:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | tilde |
| German | Schlangenlinie, Tilde |
| Portuguese | til |
| Spanish | tilde, virgulilla |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does tilde come from?
Borrowed from Spanish tilde, from Latin titulus (“superscript”) or from tildar. Doublet of titer/titre, title, titlo, tittle, and titulus. Compare Portuguese til.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).