| 1. | the sign (!) used in writing after an exclamation. |
| 2. | this mark sometimes used in writing two or more times in succession to indicate intensity of emotion, loudness, etc.: Long live the Queen!! |
| 3. | this mark sometimes used without accompanying words in writing direct discourse to indicate a speaker's dumbfounded astonishment: “His wife just gave birth to quintuplets.” (!) |
| exclamation point n. A punctuation mark (!) used after an exclamation. Also called exclamation mark. |
A punctuation mark (!) used after an abrupt and emphatic statement or after a command: “‘Help!’ he cried, as his boat floated toward the edge of Niagara Falls.”
exclamation mark character
The character "!" with ASCII code 33.
Common names: bang; pling; excl (/eks'kl/); shriek; ITU-T: exclamation mark, exclamation point (US). Rare: factorial; exclam; smash; cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; soldier; INTERCAL: spark-spot.
The Commonwealth Hackish, "pling", is common among Acorn Archimedes owners. Bang is more common in the USA.
The occasional CMU usage, "shriek", is also used by APL fans and mathematicians, especially category theorists.
Exclamation mark is used in C and elsewhere as the logical negation operation (NOT).
(1998-09-17)