Definition:
A star-shaped figure (*) primarily used to indicate an omission or call attention to a footnote.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "a small star"Examples and Observations:
- "I would like to raise a toast this week to Barney, a blue and gold parrot at a wildlife sanctuary in Nuneaton, who during an important civic visit told the local mayoress to 'f*** off.'"
(Carol Midgley, "I Swear to You, I Can't Stand P***poor Cussers," The Times, April 17, 2008) - "What the two-year, pricey process produced is a logo consisting simply of the name Walmart (with no hyphen this time). They also replaced the old upper-case, blocky lettering with rounder, lower-case letters. . . . Oh, they've also placed an artistic feature at the end of the name. Apparently it's meant to be a star, sunburst, or flower--but it really looks like an asterisk, as though we should look at the fine print before swallowing the idea that a friendlier logo means a friendlier corporation."
(Jim Hightower, July 18, 2008) - "With the possible exception of Abner Doubleday's invention of baseball, the game's most enduring myth has been Roger Maris' Asterisk. . . .
"The asterisk supposedly came into being 40 years ago when Maris became the first player to surpass the most famous American sports record of the past century, Babe Ruth's 60 home runs in one season. The asterisk was supposed to accompany Roger Maris' name into the record books to indicate that Maris had broken the record over a 162-game span instead of the 154 schedule that Ruth played.
"In point of fact, no such asterisk was ever put beside Maris' name in any record book; it never existed."
(Allen Barra, "The Myth of Maris' Asterisk," Salon.com, October 3, 2001)
Pronunciation: AS-te-RISK
