I've been vaguely aware of the word ligature as meaning "a character consisting of two or more letters combined into one," such as æ or œ. But this meaning, in the local papers, was new to me.

Ligature marks around her neck showed she had been strangled with a cord or piece of wire, Hawkins said, and an autopsy placed her death at about noon the day before.

It means "the act of tying or binding things together". Out of that, several meaning have arisen. See OneLook for starters.

Interesting, Shu, because I hadn't known your definition. I had only known it from surgery to mean a strand of suture material used to "tie off" or seal blood vessels to prevent bleeding.

I just found this definition from music, too:

a '''ligature''' is a symbol that marks a set of musical notes which are to be played in such a way as to form a single musical phrase. As such, it is also known as a '''phrase mark''', and takes the form of a curved line extended over the notes.

I had no idea this word had so many uses.

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But this meaning, in the local papers, was new to me. _Ligature_ marks around her neck showed she had been strangled with a cord or piece of wire, Hawkins said, and an autopsy placed her death at about noon the day before.

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Golly, Shu, I would have thought you'd have known that from the favorite song of the happy stranglers of S&M fame, Gaudeamus Ligature.

The only meaning I knew for ligature before this discussion was the thingy that holds the reed to the mouth piece on a clarinet or saxophone. It's a brace-like thing . . . oh, here is a link.

So, with that reference from my own past, the news article would have made sense to me in a strangling incident.

The musical reference I found was 'A method of indicating the binding of notes into groups'. It can also refer to a monogram in writing or printing.

When I think of ligatures, I think of certain groups of letters which have been connected in some way: e.g., ct, fi, fl, ß, æ, œ, etc.

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When I think of ligatures, I think of certain groups of letters which have been connected in some way: e.g., ct, fi, fl, ß, æ, œ, etc.

I still don't get it, jheem. Can you explain this more, please?

CW, if you look at older printed books and pay attention to certain groups of letters like fi or fl, you'll see that they are not just and f and an i next to one another, but a fused single graph (in fact in the fi ligature there is not dot over the i). There's no way for me to represent the fi ligature in HTML, but the æ and the œ can be. Look at them. They're like a single letter rather than two letters next to one another. (See Wikipedia for a better explanation with pictures.)

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Originally posted by jheem:
When I think of ligatures, I think of certain groups of letters which have been connected in some way: e.g., ct, fi, fl, ß, æ, œ, etc.

My son, who is learning French, wants to know why they do this. Was it just for aesthetic reasons (as I suspect the fi ligature is), or were they to represent single vowel instead of two, or what?

Interesting...the music buffs know it as a music term; the linguists see its association with letters; the medical people see it as suture material, the generally informed people see it as the "act of binding things together,"...and the murderers see it as stangling material!"

Thanks for the explanation, jheem. It was very helpful.

Kalleh - I think it's interesting, too, how we each have a different perspective. Isn't that one of the most wonderful things about this world?