The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003):
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish
/yoo?shyang hohl fish/, n. obs.
The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 0001001), which with a loop in its
tail looks like a little fish swimming down the page. The term is actually
the name of a Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not parsed)
and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang, or in modern Pinyin
transliteration yuxiang) sauce. Usage: primarily by people on the MIT LISP
Machine, which could display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit
incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.
Yu Shiang Whole Fish is alive and well in Unicode as U+0263 LATIN SMALL
LETTER GAMMA (as opposed to the actual Greek letter at U+03B3, which
usually has a loopless glyph; the form of U+0263 is consistently loopy).
This symbol is included in Unicode as a Latin letter because it is used in
the International Phonetic Alphabet. In the IPA, gamma represents a voiced
velar fricative, the sound commonly transcribed ?gh? in Arabic or Klingon.
Z
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (30 December 2018):
Yu-Shiang Whole Fish
/yoo-shyang hohl fish/ An obsolete name for the Greek
character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII code 9, Unicode glyph
0x0263) which with a loop in its tail looks like a little fish
swimming down the page. The term is actually the name of a
Chinese dish in which a fish is cooked whole (not parsed)
and covered with Yu-Shiang (or Yu-Hsiang) sauce. Used
primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine, which could
display this character on the screen. Tends to elicit
incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.
[Jargon File]
(1995-01-31)