title: Why does Git use a colon (:<branch>) to delete remote branches?
body: <p>Why does Git use</p>
  <pre><code>git push &lt;remote&gt; :&lt;branch&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>as in</p>
  <pre><code>git push origin :featureA
  </code></pre>
  <p>to delete the branch <code>featureA</code> from the remote server?</p>
  <p>I am interested in why the colon was used as the delete flag.</p>
  <p>It's so different from <code>git branch -d &lt;localbranch&gt;</code>.</p>
  <p>Why don't we do something like</p>
  <pre><code>git branch -d --remote origin &lt;branchname&gt;
  </code></pre>
  <p>or is there a deeper meaning behind the colon symbol that I didn't know?</p>