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> Slash means "of".

No, it doesn't. I mean, in certain contexts it can, but it doesn't exclusively in general, any more than it means “and/or” exclusively in general (though, it does mean “and/or” in “and/or” which probably isn’t something you should think about too much.)

It can just be a separator, as it is in American dates.



Fair point about and/or, but there's still a consistent pattern to that usage - also he/she, etc. I'm having trouble coming up with cases besides US dates where it isn't used to mean one of these two things:

"of": like one half (1/2) meaning one of two, or km/h meaning kilometers per hour, or page 14/55. In these contexts it means something within something else. In both cases there's the strong mathematical connotation of a numerator and a denominator.

"or": like in and/or or he/she.

The symbol has clear connotations, and the American date-format deviates from those.




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