What do < and > stand for?

Question

I know that the entities &lt; and &gt; are used for < and >, but I am curious what these names stand for.

Does &lt; stand for something like "Left tag" or is it just a code?

Answer 1

• &lt; this stands for the less-than sign ( < )
• &gt; this stands for the greater-than sign ( > )
• &le; this stands for the less-than or equals symbol ( ≤ )
• &ge; this stands for the greater-than or equals sign ( ≥ )

Answer 2

HTML Character Entities: 

•  Entity “&lt;” stands for “less than” and represents the symbol ‘<’. 

• Entity “&gt;” stands for “greater than” and represents the symbol ‘>’.  

Since the characters ‘<’, ‘>’, ‘<=’, ‘>=’ are reserved in HTML, Entities “&lt;”, “&gt;”, “&le;”, “&ge;” are used to replace these reserved characters. 

Answer 3

The symbols &lt; and &gt; are HTML character entities that represent the less than (<) and greater-than (>) signs, respectively.

• &lt; stands for less than (<)

• &gt; stands for greater than (>)

These entites are used in HTML so that we can ensure that these symbols are shown in website exactly.

For example I want to show “<p>”  in my website. I can write the html code like

<p> &It;p&gt; this is a paragraph </p>
The rendered output will be a h1 containing:
            <p> this is a paragraph