Obelus

[7] It represented an iron roasting spit, a dart, or the sharp end of a javelin,[8] symbolizing the skewering or cutting out of dubious matter.

The obelus is believed to have been invented by the Homeric scholar Zenodotus, as one of a system of editorial symbols.

[14][15] In the 7.0 release of Unicode, U+2E13 ⸓ DOTTED OBELOS was one of a group of "Ancient Greek textual symbols" that were added to the specification (in the block Supplemental Punctuation).

This gave rise to the modern mathematical symbol ÷, used in anglophone countries as a division sign.

[19] The ambiguity of mathematical expressions that involve the obelus and implicit multiplication has become a subject of Internet memes.

Three variants of obelus glyphs
Plus and minuses. The obelus – or division sign – used as a variant of the minus sign in an excerpt from an official Norwegian trading statement form called «Næringsoppgave 1» for the taxation year 2010.