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I realize these would probably be neologisms or maybe trademarks, but are there some obvious example "words" to use that contain a number or symbol? (eg 0123456789!@#$%^&*()

For the purpose of this discussion, lets exclude hyphenated words.

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    Interestingly enough, "&" is the opposite of your question - a symbol that is/was a word - originally a ligature of the characters "e" and "t" in "et", the Latin word meaning "and". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampersand, http://blog.dictionary.com/ampersand/ – vynsane Jun 16 '16 at 16:09
  • Words are composed of letters which themselves are listed in the alphabet. Seems like an obvious thing to say but... no, there can't be words which use symbols not found in the alphabet. Apart from maybe foreign words which English has adopted, like cliche. – Charon Jun 16 '16 at 17:02
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    Short story, see @tchrist's comment here: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/208525/what-non-alphabetic-characters-are-valid-in-english-spelling/208555#comment442621_208529 . That's as comprehensive as you can get (everything in the OED that isn't a "letter"). – Dan Bron Jun 16 '16 at 17:06
  • Merriam-Webster allows 86 as a variant of the slang verb eighty-six, along with the forms 86ing, 86es, and (less regularly) 86'd, indicating it can be conjugated more or less like a normal verb. – Stuart F Jun 28 '21 at 13:48

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To answer this question, you might find a word list file (these files are used by programmers for things like spell checking, text parsing, writing scrabble AIs, etc) and doing a search for numbers and symbols.

Start by doing a google search of "word list file" and then doing a ctrl+f search inside those files.

Here is an example, but it doesn't contain any words with numbers or symbols.

Here is another, and it contains "&c" and words like 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.

Here is an interactive tool that allows you to generate your own word list files.

From my research, I can't find any words that contain numbers or symbols other than obvious ones (1st, 2nd, 3rd...) and &c, which vynsane already pointed out is a result of &'s older meaning.

Kevin Workman
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