Q&complAints #466 : “O” Word

What is your favorite uncommon word beginning with “O”?

Post your answer in the LEAVE A COMMENT section below. I’m not the boss of you, though. Don’t write anything for all I care! Or maybe just tell me what’s round on the end and high in the middle?
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. . .here are my thoughts.

What is your favorite uncommon word beginning with “O”?

octothorpe: (noun) another term for the pound sign (#) 

Pound sign. Number sign. Crosshatch. Hashtag. All quite common words. All referencing the same thing: the octothorpe. Perhaps the first time I encountered those two parallel pairs of perpendicular, intersecting lines was on the keypad of a landline telephone. Remember those? Please tell me you don’t still have one! I wish I could tell you why our octothorpe friend lives at the bottom right-hand corner of telephone keypads even to this day, but I haven’t the faintest idea. We’ve all drawn countless octothorpes in our youth—immediately before yet another round of tic-tac-toe with Grandma. A game which is a complete waste of time, since two competent players will end every instance from here to the heat death of the Universe in a draw. #infinity. Whether you read that as “Number infinity” or “Hashtag infinity,” likely has a lot to do with when you were born. I’ve even seen # used as shorthand for a person’s weight in pounds. It’s quite a marvel how the octothorpe has found such varied uses, all while maintaining its WITSEC-esque anonymity under the guise of aliases.


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