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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-17T21:24:50+00:00

On various sites, jQuery’s $ variable is referred to as an alias, and on

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On various sites, jQuery’s $ variable is referred to as an alias, and on others, it is referred to as a factory. I took a look at the source code, and I think the former is correct. As far as I can see, the dollar symbol is being defined here:

// Expose jQuery to the global object
return (window.jQuery = window.$ = jQuery);

This is setting both $ and jQuery to the SAME alias; there is no ‘factory’ for jQuery objects. Are the sites referring to $ as a ‘factory’ simply wrong?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I think either is an okay term. The dollar sign is certainly an alias for the jQuery function, specifically to be used as a shorthand. If someone refers to the function as a factory, I don’t think that’s specific to the $ alias, but just describing what the jQuery function does in general, which is create objects from various different types of input.

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