What the asterisk means
The name comes from the Greek asteriskos, "little star". In print, an asterisk points the reader to a footnote or a condition, as in Free shipping*. Three spaced asterisks (* * *), or the triangle-shaped asterism ⁂, mark a break between sections of a story. In linguistics, an asterisk marks an ungrammatical sentence or a reconstructed word that was never written down.
Online, asterisks hide letters in rude words (f***) and frame actions in chat (*sigh*). In computing, * multiplies (2 * 3), works as a wildcard in file names (*.jpg means every JPG) and stands for "any word" in a quoted Google search.
Asterisks in Word, Discord and WhatsApp
Many apps treat asterisks as formatting codes, so a typed asterisk sometimes vanishes. In Discord and other Markdown apps, *text* is italic and **text** is bold. In WhatsApp, *text* makes text bold. Word can also turn *text* into bold, and typing * and a space at the start of a line starts a bulleted list.
To show a literal asterisk in Discord or Markdown, put a backslash before it (\*). In any app you can also paste a look-alike such as the asterisk operator ∗ or the heavy asterisk ✱, which are never treated as formatting.
Fancy asterisks and how to type the asterisk
The heavy asterisk ✱ and the teardrop-spoked ✻ and ❋ are dingbats that look good as list markers or dividers in bios, and ✳︎ shows as a green emoji on most phones. The reference mark ※ (kome) is used in Japanese for notes, much like the asterisk in English. More starry shapes are on the star symbol and sparkle symbols pages.
On a keyboard, the asterisk is Shift + 8 or the key above the number pad. With Alt codes, hold Alt and type 42. On phones, it is on the #+= page (iPhone) or the ?123 page (Android). In HTML5 you can also write *.