Why is the "<" symbol named the "less-than sign"?

Andrea Giammarchi andrea.giammarchi at gmail.com
Wed Sep 16 08:28:17 CDT 2020


What your right eye sees can't compete with what the outer world actually
is 😂

(emoji with no less-than on purpose)

On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 3:22 PM Shriramana Sharma <samjnaa at gmail.com> wrote:

> There's a less than symbol in that 😉 as well.
>
> On Wed, 16 Sep, 2020, 18:07 Andrea Giammarchi, <
> andrea.giammarchi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> easy to visualize too, same for me too ... it's actually semantic, if you
>> don't think it's a "v" but an equal = that rotates axes to indicate 0 < 1,
>> 1 = 1, 2 > 1 😉
>>
>> also, what's the meaning of winking? (kidding)
>>
>> best regards
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 16, 2020 at 2:19 PM Shriramana Sharma via Unicode <
>> unicode at unicode.org> wrote:
>>
>>> When I was a child and first taught < and > at school, I figured that
>>> they were derived from the equals sign =, except that the bigger
>>> number has the bigger separation between the lines and the smaller
>>> number has the smaller separation becoming none. So I do see meaning
>>> in it.
>>>
>>> And it was obviously named the less than sign long before it was used
>>> for XML tags.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Shriramana Sharma ஶ்ரீரமணஶர்மா श्रीरमणशर्मा 𑀰𑁆𑀭𑀻𑀭𑀫𑀡𑀰𑀭𑁆𑀫𑀸
>>>
>>>
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