Ampersand, & I Don't Know Why!

the "AND" stamp?

I don't know why, but I'm picturing a printing press.  Like, the first one, even, and there's a reporter there with the printer.  I'm imagining it's noisy, even though I realize that doesn't make sense.  

And they're both wearing hats.

So the reporter, yelling over whatever noise, picks up one of the block letters and inquires,

"What's this?"  

To which the printer replies, "the AND stamp".

"The what?" (it's noisy)

"the stamp for AND"

"Well," said the reporter in retrospect, "it was noisy, and I thought he said "ampersand"".

Now that I've had this little fantasy, I must look up the actual origins of the ampersand.  Because the goal here is more smart-ass, less dumb-ass.

Turns out, it goes way further back than 15th century...  Indeed the "glyph" has been seen in 1st Century writing.  The word "and" in Latin is "et", and the ampersand is "et" in old roman cursive.  So it's accidentally a glyph; to them it was just a word.

Additionally, calling the glyph "ampersand" is an evolutionary mistake!  

In old english, they used the "et" to mean "per se", which means "by itself".  They called the "et" the "per se and", and they used it in reference to letters that are also words (A, I) to make things less confusing, but I am actually confused by that whole idea.    

It used to be taught to children as part of the ABC's (W, X, Y, Z, and per se and).  Most children learn the letter Elemenopee incorrectly at first, and the Andperseand happened that same way.  And it stuck.

 This little adventure happened because of a shitty song called "cumbersome".  Every time I hear it, I change "cumbersome" to "ampersand".  Yep.

I DON'T KNOW WHY.

And Per Se And Is Cumbersome