What Is the Tilde? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
A wavy line above a letter. Spanish uses it for ñ, Portuguese for nasal vowels (ã, õ), Estonian for õ, and Vietnamese for the broken rising tone.
Letters with the tilde: õ ã ñ ĩ ũ ẽ ỹ ȭ ṍ ṏ ṹ ṽ
Combining character: U+0303
What the tilde does
A wavy line above a letter. Spanish uses it for ñ, Portuguese for nasal vowels (ã, õ), Estonian for õ, and Vietnamese for the broken rising tone. Unicode encodes 24 precomposed letters with this mark as their first diacritic, and the combining form U+0303 can add it to any other letter.
Languages that use it
Estonian, Portuguese, Spanish, Vietnamese.
All lowercase letters with the tilde
Codes and shortcuts
| Letter | Name | Unicode | Alt code | Mac |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| õ | o with tilde | U+00F5 | Alt+0245 | Option+N, then O |
| ã | a with tilde | U+00E3 | Alt+0227 | Option+N, then A |
| ñ | n with tilde | U+00F1 | Alt+0241 | Option+N, then N |
| ĩ | i with tilde | U+0129 | — | — |
| ũ | u with tilde | U+0169 | — | — |
| ẽ | e with tilde | U+1EBD | — | — |
| ỹ | y with tilde | U+1EF9 | — | — |
| ȭ | o with tilde and macron | U+022D | — | — |
| ṍ | o with tilde and acute | U+1E4D | — | — |
| ṏ | o with tilde and umlaut | U+1E4F | — | — |
| ṹ | u with tilde and acute | U+1E79 | — | — |
| ṽ | v with tilde | U+1E7D | — | — |
How to type it on any letter
On Windows, hold Alt and type the code from the table, or type the letter followed by U+0303 in Word and press Alt+X. On a Mac, use Unicode Hex Input: type the letter, then hold Option and type 0303. On a Chromebook, type the letter, then Ctrl+Shift+U, 0303, Space.
Copy every letter with the tilde
Related guides
- What Is the Acute accent? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Grave accent? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Circumflex? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Umlaut / diaeresis? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It
- What Is the Cedilla? Meaning, Letters and How to Type It