This is about as niche as niche gets, but I’m always up for an obsessive investigation into some terminally obscure phenomenon, especially when it involves type, and I figure I’m not the only one, so I hereby present Jonathan Chan’s search for the origin and meaning of ⍼:
1. Apr. 2022 U+237C ⍼ RIGHT ANGLE WITH DOWNWARDS ZIGZAG ARROW (“Known as right angle with downwards zigzag arrow, angle with down zig-zag arrow, \rangledownzigzagarrow, and ⍼, no one knows what ⍼ is meant to represent or where it originated from.”)
2. June 2023 update: U+237C ⍼ ⍼ (“Our glyph comes from Monotype under the matrix serial number S16139.”)
3. Jan. 2024 Monotype Mathematical Sorts (“And finally, here we have once again the 1972 list of mathematical characters, including series L231 containing ⍼, which is bound together with the original list rather than collected alongside as looseleaf.”)
4. Aug. 2024 U+237C ⍼ is (also) S9576 ⍼ (“The earliest verifiable appearance of ⍼ is then January 1963, and must have been created in the eight-year period between then and December 1954.”)
5. Feb. 2026 U+237C ⍼ is Azimuth
Very satisfying to finally get a solution! I have to say I was shocked by this passing remark in the 2023 update: “I requested a digital scan of that page, which cost 18£.” Eighteen pounds for a scan of one page?! But good for him for coughing up. (Via MeFi.)
Googling reveals that at least one person (but possibly only that one person?) has previously made the obvious “Witch-King of Angzarr” joke. (In connection with a meme about vaccines (?) posted to a tumblr blog by someone using the nom de plume intrinsically-disordered-proxein.)
According to xkcd, it means “Larry Potter.”
“Harry Loser”.
U+237C ⍼ is Azimut but also Richtungswinkel, which is apparently a different thing with its own de.wiki page (but no en.wiki equivalent).
As far as I’m aware, so far no one had found any actual example of actual use in an actual text (as opposed to mentions in catalogues, IIRC mostly Swedish ones).
Even with a known meaning, it’s still the symbol equivalent of one of those words that only appear in dictionaries.
Richtungswinkel,
English “bearing” (in navigation)? I don’t know what the angle clockwise from north is called in surveying, if anything.
It’s altogether a fun Unicode block. 237E is ⍾.
Did anyone else do a double-take at that sentence? “between then and <date>” I expect to be counting forward, IOW then to be before date.
@AntC: It seemed fine to me when I first read it, but now that you have pointed the reversal out it does seem just a little odd.
@DE: 237E is ⍾.
@Y: That was directed by the great Ishiro Honda, lauded as the primary creator of Godzilla. However, he also directed some pretty weird and not so well respected Kaiju stuff, like Frankenstein vs. Baragon.