"Origins of words" by Susie Dent, Countdown 20/02/18 (X for kiss, 0 for hug)

I had an e-mail in from Darren Smith in Kenley and he said, "Can you ask Susie to explain why X replesent a kiss. Has it anything to do with Spanish "equis"? Keep up a good stuff, you be sure of it", says Darren for you, Nick. It is a very good quiestion. Where does these symbols come from? We do sprinkle them absolutely everywhere in our correspondence these days. Unsurprisingly, lots and lots of theories as to where they come from. Not definitive answer but we can make a good guess. There are visual explanations. Some people think that X is a character, looks like two pairs of lips come together, while the 0 which we use to mean a hug looks like an embrace, and X0X0 is like a kiss on the face. Some people try to interpret it in that way. Other people looks to the ear, sort of auditory explanation and think that there is a similarity in the pronunciation between X ans kiss. I haven't heard "equis" before, Darren's theory, which, of course, means the letter X in Spanish but we can add that one to the list of the many suggestions. As I say, no definitive answer, but we can get a good guessand it's mostly to come from a written tradition. When Christianity came along, X was used unsurprisingly to represent a cross. X means Christ, as in Xmas we have today, and because of that it meant faith and fidelity, so that might explain why it was used in the correspondence. It certanly became a signature of choice. In the Middle Ages, when few people could write, documents were signed and sealed indeeed with an X embossed in wax, and you'll find letters between kings and subject, all letters between ordinary peopre sealed with a kiss, and with that literal symbol of the X. The Oxford English Dictionary has the first record of X as a liss from letter in 1763, and it was the British curate and naturalist called Gilbert White, and he wrote a letter which ended, "I am with a many XXXX and many a Pater noster and Ave Maria, Gil White". So the X in his letter could mean kisses but it also could mean blessings, given that he also calls upon some, you know, religious refereces there. But by the time Winston Chulchill was writting a letter to his mother, you know, many years later, we knew what it meant. He said. "Please excuse bad writing as I am in an awful hurry, XXX (many kisses), WSC". Come to the zero, the nought we use for a hug and finally that probably came from a completely non-religious source and the linguist Ben Zimmer, who was wonderful on these things, thinks that it stems from the game of nought and crosses which sounds completely ludicrous until you know that actaully that was ariund since Egyptian times and Roman times as well. It is calles tic-tac-toe in America. Lots and lots of different names all over the world. It was played with pebbles and coins, whatever was available, but it was very much in the popular imagination. That's possibly why X and zero became used together. X meaning a kiss and zero became a hug. So a long explanation.