English

Noun

caret ‎(plural carets)

1. A mark: ⟨ ‸ ⟩ used by writers and proof readers to indicate that something is to be inserted in the place marked by the caret.
2. (graphical user interface) An indicator, often a blinking line or bar, indicating where the next insertion or other edit will take place. Also called a cursor.
3. (nonstandard) A háček.
   • 1944, Maro Beath Jones, Inclusive Uniform Alphabet for Russian, Bulgarian, Serb-Croatian, Czech, Polish (Claremont Slavic Series, Claremont College), page 10

     […] the more conventional semivocalic j and the caret (ˇ) respectively.

   • 1948, Bohumil Emil Mikula, Progressive Czech (Bohemian) (Chicago: Czechoslovak National Council of America), 6

     The caret (ˇ), háček, is used over the following consonants: c, d, n, t, r, s, and z to indicate the soft sound. The caret (ˇ) is also used over the vowel e (See Pronunciation II, b, p, v).

   • 1991, Michael Shapiro, The Sense of Change: Language as History (Indiana University Press; ISBN 0253352037, 9780253352033), page 58

     In contemporary Czech, the “hook” or caret is no longer in use for lower-case t and d when the latter are palatal; instead, an apostrophe is used (t’, d’) This development is clearly connected with the practical difficulty encountered in printing a caret over letter stems that are too thin.

Derived terms

• inverted caret

Translations

Etymology 2

French

Noun

caret ‎(plural carets)

1. A kind of turtle, the hawksbill.

Anagrams

• cater, crate, react, recta, trace

French

Noun

caret m ‎(plural carets)

1. hawksbill (turtle)
2. yarn (thread of a rope)

Latin

Verb

caret

1. third-person singular present active indicative of careō

Welsh

Alternative forms

• carit (literary)
• carset (colloquial)

Pronunciation

• (North Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈkarɛt/
• (South Wales) IPA^(key): /ˈkɑːrɛt/

Verb

caret

1. (colloquial) second-person singular conditional of caru

Mutation