What is "asterisk"

Asterisk \As"ter*isk\, n. [L. asteriscus, Gr. ?, dim. of 'asth`r star. See Aster.] The figure of a star, thus, ?, used in printing and writing as a reference to a passage or note in the margin, to supply the omission of letters or words, or to mark a word or phrase as having a special character.

"figure used in printing and writing to indicate footnote, omission, etc.," late 14c., asterich, asterisc, from Late Latin asteriscus, from Greek asterikos "little star," diminutive of aster "star" (see astro-). As a verb from 1733.

n. 1 Symbol (*). 2 (context sports US English) A blemish in an otherwise outstanding achievement. 3 (context biology English) Alternate of Asteriscus. vb. To mark with an asterisk symbol (*)

1. n. a star-shaped character * used in printing [syn: star]

2. v. mark with an asterisk; "Linguists star unacceptable sentences" [syn: star]

An asterisk (*; from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , asteriskos, "little star") is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). In English, an asterisk is usually five-pointed in sans-serif typefaces, six-pointed in serif typefaces, and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten. It can be used as censorship. It is also used on the Internet to correct one's spelling, in which case it appears before or after* the corrected word.

The asterisk is derived from the need of the printers of family trees in feudal times for a symbol to indicate date of birth. The original shape was seven-armed, each arm like a teardrop shooting from the center.

In computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication.

Asterisk is a software implementation of a telephone private branch exchange (PBX); it allows attached telephones to make calls to one another, and to connect to other telephone services, such as the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services. Its name comes from the asterisk symbol, *.

Asterisk is released with a dual license model, using the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a free software license and a proprietary software license to permit licensees to distribute proprietary, unpublished system components.

Asterisk was created in 1999 by Mark Spencer of Digium. Originally designed for Linux, Asterisk runs on a variety of operating systems, including NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris. Asterisk is small enough to run in an embedded environment such as Customer-premises equipment-hardware running OpenWrt. There are complete self-contained versions that can boot from a storage device such as a flash drive or external disk drive (preferably IDE/PATA, SATA or mSATA; a USB-connected device can be used, but is often not recommended). A live CD or virtual machine can also be used.

An asterisk is a typographic symbol, the glyph *

Asterisk may also refer to:

• Asterisk (liturgy), a liturgical implement
• Asterisk (PBX), Unix telephony software
• "Asterisk" (song), by Orange Range

is the 10th single from Orange Range.

It was used as the first opening to the anime Bleach. It reached the top of the Oricon Weekly Single Charts for sales for the weeks of March 7 and March 14, 2005, and was the number 1 song on the Oricon in March 2005. For the Oricon's first-half-of-the-year ranking it reached number 2 and was the number 4 best selling song for the year of 2005. It is one of Orange Range's most successful singles, selling 628,329 copies. It was certified Double Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for physical copies and Platinum for its digital sales.

The Asterisk (; Slavonic: Звездица, Zvezdítsa), or Star-cover (from the Greek αστήρ,astêr, meaning star), is one of the holy vessels used in the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches. The asterisk symbolizes the Star of Bethlehem.