The origin of “ampersand”

I ran across a blog I didn’t know the other day — dictionary.com’s hot word — with a post called What character was removed from the alphabet but is still used every day?. The answer is & and the post gives the history of the symbol as well as the origin of the word “ampersand”

The word “ampersand” came many years later when “&” was actually part of the English alphabet. In the early 1800s, school children reciting their ABCs concluded the alphabet with the &. It would have been confusing to say “X, Y, Z, and.” Rather, the students said, “and per se and.” “Per se” means “by itself,” so the students were essentially saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.” Over time, “and per se and” was slurred together into the word we use today: ampersand.

The illustration above is from Wikipedia, and shows the evolution of the symbol, from Old Roman cursive, reed pen, 131 AD on the left to the modern one on the right.