Editing Circumflex (section)

{{Short description|Diacritic (◌̂) in European scripts}}
{{About|the diacritic used to modify other characters|use as an independent, spacing character|Caret (proofreading)|and|Caret (computing)}}
{{More citations needed|date=January 2011}}
{{Infobox diacritic|char=◌̂  |name=Circumflex (diacritic)
|unicode={{unichar|0302|COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT |cwith=◌}} }}
{{Infobox symbol
|mark = ^
|name=Circumflex (symbol) 
|unicode = {{unichar|005E|Circumflex accent|nlink=Caret (computing)}} (freestanding symbol, see [[#Freestanding|below]])<br />
{{unichar|02C6|MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT|nlink=Spacing Modifier Letters}} (IPA, UPA etc. symbol)<br />
{{unichar|FF3E|Fullwidth circumflex accent|nlink=Fullwidth and halfwidth forms}} (freestanding)
|see also = Similar free-standing accent symbols: 
  {{unbulleted list
   |{{unichar|0060|nlink=Grave accent}}
   | {{unichar|007E|nlink=Tilde}} 
   | {{unichar|00B4|nlink=Acute accent}}
  }}
|different from = {{unichar|0302|COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT |cwith=◌}} (diacritic)<br />
{{unichar|2038|caret|nlink=caret (proofreading)}}<br />
{{unichar|2227|Logical AND|nlink=Logical conjunction}}
}}
{{IPA notice}}

The '''circumflex''' (<span style="font-family: serif">{{char|◌̂}}</span>) <!-- This sample uses <span style="font-family: serif"> because of rendering limitation in Android (as of v13), that its default sans font fails to render "dotted circle + diacritic", so visitors just get a meaningless (to most) [X] mark. Please retain at least until the issue is resolved because this is a very large proportion of visitors. -->is a [[diacritic]] in the [[Latin script|Latin]] and [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various [[romanization]] and [[Transcription (linguistics)|transcription]] schemes. It received its English name from {{langx|la|circumflexus}} "bent around"{{mdash}}a translation of the {{langx|grc|περισπωμένη}} ({{transliteration|grc|[[perispomenon|perispōménē]]}}).

The circumflex in the Latin script is [[Chevron (insignia)|chevron]]-shaped (<big><span style="font-family: serif">{{char|◌̂}}</span></big>), while the Greek circumflex may be displayed either like a [[tilde]] (<big><span style="font-family: serif">{{char|◌̃}}</span></big>) or like an [[inverted breve]] (<big><span style="font-family: serif">{{char|◌̑}}</span></big>). For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin alphabet, [[precomposed character]]s are available.

In [[English language|English]], the circumflex, like other diacritics, is sometimes retained on [[loanword]]s that used it in the original language (for example ''[[entrepôt]], [[crème brûlée]]'').
In mathematics and [[statistics]], the circumflex diacritic is sometimes used to denote a function and is called a ''[[hat operator]]''.

A free-standing version of the circumflex symbol, {{char|^}}, is encoded in [[ASCII]] and [[Unicode]] and has become known as ''[[caret (computing)|caret]]'' and has acquired special uses, particularly in [[computing]] and [[mathematics]]. The [[caret (proofreading)|original caret]], <big>{{char|‸}}</big>, is used in [[proofreading]] to indicate insertion.