English language:

The most common use is to replace the hyphen or en dash to make clear a strong joint between words or phrases, such as “the Hemingway/Faulkner generation”. Yet very often it is used to represent the concept or, especially in instruction books.

The symbol also appears in the hybrid formation and/or, a prose representation of the logical concept of disjunction.

Arithmetic:

The solidus and virgule are distinct typographic symbols with decidedly different uses. The solidus is significantly more horizontal than the virgule. The character found on standard keyboards is the virgule and while most people lump the two characters together (and when there is no alternative it is acceptable to use the virgule in place of the solidus), they are different. The solidus is used in the display of ratios and fractions as in constructing a fraction using superscript and subscript as in “123⁄456”; the virgule is used for essentially any other textual purpose.

slash or forward slash (as opposed to backward slash \)

back slash \