{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Episode 98: Lost Letters: Long s (\u017f) and Ampersand (&)","description":"In many English works printed before the late 19th century, a letter unfamiliar to us today, \u017f, is often used in place of the letter S. However, that unfamiliar f-looking letter is actually just an archaic form of the letter S called "long s". In this episode, we explore the origins and decline of this odd orthographical relic. As a coda to our series on lost letters, we also explore the history of the ampersand (&), which up until the late 19th century was often listed as the 27th letter of the alphabet.  Examples from the episode: 1. Us'd, Clos'd 2. Always puffs, offset, satisfaction; never puff\u017f, off\u017fet, sati\u017ffaction 3. 17th century: mask, disbelief; 18th century ma\u017fk, di\u017fbelief 4. Confu\u017f-ed, di\u017f-appearance  5. Gene\u017f. ","author_name":"Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast","author_url":"http:\/\/wordsforgranted.com","html":"