A curved accent mark (^) placed over a vowel in some languages to indicate pronunciation or historical spelling changes.
From Latin circumflexus (bent around), literally meaning 'bent on both sides.' Introduced to English typography from French and other Romance languages around the 16th century.
The circumflex is a linguistic fossil—it marks where letters have disappeared over centuries; in French 'château,' the circumflex shows where an 's' used to be (the word came from Latin 'castellum').
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