SYM·0084 · Recipe
Prescription
take — and nothing more
- Unicode
- U+211E prescription take
- Meaning
- The instruction opening a prescription: Latin recipe, “take”, addressed to whoever compounds the medicine.
- History
- An R with a stroke through its leg — a scribal abbreviation of exactly the ordinary kind, the cross-bar being a common medieval marker that a word has been cut short. The character’s name in Unicode is PRESCRIPTION TAKE, which is the etymology stated in full.
- Variants
- The crossed leg varies from a light stroke to a full descender; in American usage Rx is now set as two letters and read as a word.
- Related
- ⚕ ☤ the medical marks; & another abbreviation that outgrew its own shorthand.
- Appears
- Prescription pads, pharmacy signage, drug regulation, and the phrase “an Rx for” in general speech.
- Evolution
- Scribal abbreviation → legal marker of a prescription-only medicine → brand shorthand and ordinary English noun.
Sources · 3
- documented The recipe derivation, supported by the character’s own history as an abbreviation and by its Unicode name.
- folk That it is the astrological sign of Jupiter ♃, invoked to bless the treatment. Popular in medical folklore and in pharmacy-school lore; there is no evidence for it and the ordinary abbreviation accounts for the shape completely.
- folk That it derives from the Eye of Horus 𓂀. The same objection, with an extra continent to cross.