The story
- Hindi · borrowed fromहलंत
- English todayhalant
Borrowed from Hindi हलंत (halant). The computing sense arises from the diacritic sense through the use in ISCII of the same computer character to act, depending on context and font capabilities, as either a visual diacritic or as a control character modifying a pair of consonants.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.