The symbol "^" is known as a caret or circumflex. It is commonly used in mathematics to denote exponentiation, indicating that a number should be raised to the power of another number. For example, in the expression "2^3," it means 2 raised to the power of 3, which equals 8. In addition to its mathematical use, the caret appears in various programming languages and text editing. In programming, it can represent bitwise operations or logical XOR. In text editing, it often indicates where a character should be inserted or denotes a superscript in some contexts.