asterisk (*) [1]: a symbol which is attached to the beginning of a linguistic form to indicate that it is incorrect. For example, "He *breaked it" is marked with an asterisk to indicate that one does not say this in English (one says "He broke it" instead). Compare question mark [1] (?), exclamation point [1,2] (!). [Spanish: asterisco [1]]

asterisk (*) [2]: a symbol which is attached to the beginning of a linguistic form to indicate that it is hypothetical. It is especially used for reconstructed proto-forms, proposed as historical forms without direct evidence. For example, the tl of modern Nahuatl comes from *t when it was followed by *a in Proto-Nahuatl; the asterisk indicates that we have no direct evidence of this, since Proto-Nahuatl has not been spoken for thousands of years and we have no written record of what it was like. In contrast, one can speak of tl (without an asterisk) in Classical Nahuatl, since even though it is no longer spoken as a living language, there are numerous documents which give direct evidence of how it was pronounced. [Spanish: asterisco [2]]