Calculator spelling is an unintended characteristic of the

seven-segment display A seven-segment display is a display device for Arabic numerals, less complex than a device that can show more characters such as dot matrix displays. Seven-segment displays are widely used in digital clocks, electronic meters, basic calculators, ...

traditionally used by

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-si ...

s, in which, when read upside-down, the digits resemble letters of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the Ancient Rome, ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered except several letters splitting—i.e. from , and from � ...

. Each digit may be mapped to one or more letters, creating a limited but functional

subset In mathematics, a Set (mathematics), set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all Element (mathematics), elements of ''A'' are also elements of ''B''; ''B'' is then a superset of ''A''. It is possible for ''A'' and ''B'' to be equal; if they a ...

of the alphabet, sometimes referred to as ''beghilos'' (or ''beghilosz'').

Applications

Aside from novelty and amusement, calculator spelling has limited utility. The popularity of

pager A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a Wireless communication, wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays Alphanumericals, alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response p ...

s in the 1990s gave rise to a form of

leetspeak Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via refle ...

called "pager-speak."Pager Language , Teens Create Language of Pager-Speak - Los Angeles Times
/ref> Students, in particular, experimented with calculators to discover new words.

English version

: The "original" attributed example of calculator spelling, which dates from the 1970s, is 5318008, which when turned over spells " BOOBIES". Another early example of calculator spelling offered the sequence 0.7734, which becomes "

hello Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is first attested in writing from 1826. Early uses ''Hello'', with that spelling, was used in publications in the U.S. as early as the 18 October 1826 edition of the '' Norwich Cou ...

", or could also be written as 0.1134. The 1979 album '' Five Three One - Double Seven O Four'' by

The Hollies The Hollies are an English rock and pop band formed in Manchester in 1962. One of the leading British groups of the 1960s and into the mid-1970s, they are known for their distinctive three-part vocal harmony style. Singer Allan Clarke and ...

encodes the band's name in calculator spelling ("hOLLIES"). Other words possible with the traditional "BEghILOSZ" set include "loose", "shell", "BEIgE", "gOBBLE", "gOOgLE", and many others. Among the longest are " hILLBILLIES" and " SLEIghBELLS" at 11, " gLOSSOLOgIES" and " BIBLIOLOgIES" at 12 letters, and " hEEBEEgEEBEES" at 13 letters, although the latter is not listed under that spelling in the Oxford Dictionary. Fittingly, glossology is the scientific study of language and linguistics. Another common case, 7734206, spells "gO 2 hELL" (or, alternately, 7734209 spells "GO 2 hELL"). 8008 is special in that it can spell "BOOB" upside-down or right-side up. 71077345 spells " SHELLOIL". There are also a couple of names that can be calculator-spelled. For example, 318830= DEBBIE, 7718= BILL, 46137=

LEIgh Leigh may refer to: Places In England Pronounced : * Leigh, Greater Manchester, Borough of Wigan ** Leigh (UK Parliament constituency) * Leigh-on-Sea, Essex Pronounced : * Leigh, Dorset * Leigh, Gloucestershire * Leigh, Kent * Leigh, Staffor ...

, 5107=

LOIS Lois is a common English name from the New Testament. Paul the Apostle mentions Lois, the pious grandmother of Saint Timothy in the Second Epistle to Timothy (commending her for her faith in 2 Timothy 1:5). The name was first used by English C ...

, 31773=

ELLIE Ellie or Elly is a given name. The name stands on its own or can be a shortened form of any of the numerous female names beginning with the syllable El-, in particular Elizabeth, Eleanor, or Elvira. It can also be a short form of Elaine, Elena ...

, 31717173=ELI LILIE (in Polish: lily flowers of Elisabeth), 302= ZOE and 451713 317718=

BILLIE EILISh Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell ( ; born December 18, 2001) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She first gained public attention in 2015 with her debut single "Ocean Eyes (song), Ocean Eyes", written and produced by her broth ...

. The calculator spelling 304 eventually entered common slang in the 2020s as a euphemism for a promiscuous woman (hOE, although the traditional spelling of " ho" in that sense lacks an e, and 304 more accurately spells the garden tool).

Scientific and programmer calculators

Scientific calculator A scientific calculator is an Electronics, electronic calculator, either desktop or handheld, designed to perform calculations using basic (addition, subtraction, multiplication, Division (mathematics), division) and advanced (Trigonometric fun ...

s that feature

hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...

readout offer more flexibility. This allows the letters ''A'' through ''F'' to also be used (a practice known as

hexspeak Hexspeak is a novelty form of variant English spelling using the hexadecimal digits. Created by programmers as memorable magic numbers, hexspeak words can serve as a clear and unique identifier with which to mark memory or data. Hexadecimal not ...

or Base 16): : Students often use this capability and the improved "alpha" feature that uses the letters "A" through "Z" to write messages, separating words by using the minus sign ("-") or other punctuation. In some calculators that use dot matrix displays, a

factorial In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the Product (mathematics), product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial: \begin n! &= n \times ...

product sign ("!") can be used to add emphasis. For example, "B00B1E5!".

References

Bibliography

External links

Calculator Haikus
nbsp;– Some examples and a report of finding a total of 118 English words possible to display using the upside-down technique
A list of 250 calculator-spellable English words
nbsp;– A list of calculator spelling words generated by

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp), sometimes referred to as rational expression, is a sequence of characters that specifies a match pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

search
Topsy-Turvy Calculator
nbsp;– An upside-down calculator

– A list of calculator-spellable Spanish words, and

Logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name that it represents, as in ...

code to convert them to numbers
The Ultimate List
nbsp;– An 824-word list and an extended 1455-word list of English words possible to display on an upside-down calculator,

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...