?
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word ?. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word ?, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say ? in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word ? you have here. The definition of the word ? will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of?, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: Appendix:Variations of "?"
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Translingual
| Text style |
Emoji style |
|---|---|
| ❓︎ | ❓️ |
| Note: Character's appearance may be different on each system. Text style is forced with ︎ and emoji style with ️ | |
| Text style |
Emoji style |
|---|---|
| ❔︎ | ❔️ |
| Note: Character's appearance may be different on each system. Text style is forced with ︎ and emoji style with ️ | |
Etymology
? may derive from Qo, with the Q written over the o, an abbreviation of Latin quaestio (“question”), placed at the end of a question to mark it as such.
Punctuation mark
? (English name question mark)
- Used in various left-to-right scripts, including notably the Latin script, to mark the preceding sentence as a question.
- (comics, Internet slang) Used by itself to convey that the speaker is confused.
- Character #1: "I have no time to explain! Have you seen a Big Bad Wolf blowing down various houses?"
- Character #2: "?"
- (linguistics) Marks the following word or phrase as questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason.
- 2006, Renaat Declerck, Susan Reed, Bert Cappelle, “The Grammar of the English Verb Phrase”, in The Grammar of the English Tense System, volume 1 (in English), →ISBN, page 6:
- A superscript question mark will be used similarly to indicate that a sentence or constituent is questionable for a grammatical or semantic-pragmatic reason. A double superscript question mark indicates an even higher degree of questionability.
I have never { worked / ?been working } on a dissertation
This time tomorrow I { will / ??am going to } be driving to London.
See also
- For the reversed question mark used in some right-to-left scripts, such as the Arabic script, see ؟.
Symbol
?
- A placeholder for an unknown word, phrase, text, or numerical value.
- (chess) In algebraic notation, marking a bad move.
- (programming) A wildcard for one character in query language.
- (programming) The ternary operator in some programming languages.
- (regular expressions) Detects zero or one occurrences of the preceding element.
- The string
colou?rmatches both "color" and "colour".
- The string
- (networking) In a URL, begins a query string (a series of data formatted as field-value pairs).
Usage notes
- Its English name is variously question mark, interrogation mark, interrogation point, eroteme.
Quotations
For quotations using this term, see Citations:?.
Derived terms
See also
- apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
- curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
- square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
- colon ( : )
- comma ( , )
- dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
- ellipsis ( … )
- exclamation mark ( ! )
- fraction slash ( ⁄ )
- guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
- hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
- interpunct ( · )
- interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
- brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
- full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
- question mark ( ? )
- quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
- quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
- semicolon ( ; )
- slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
- space ( ] [ )
References
- ^ Alexander Humez, 1987, A B C et cetera: the life & times of the Roman alphabet
English
Noun
? (plural ?s)
- (text messaging) A question.
- i hav a ? 4 u (I have a question for you)
- objects seen/shaped as the question mark
- a ? block (a question-mark block)
Spanish
Punctuation mark
?
- Used in ¿ ?
- (nonstandard) Marks a preceding passage as a question, without the starting ¿, as in English and other languages
- Cómo estás? ― How are you?
Usage notes
- As SMS messaging and other forms of electronic communication have become more common, some Spanish-speakers use only ? for questions and ! for exclamations, leaving out the initial typographical mark. This is considered non-standard usage.