Omicron
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Omicron (
Use
In addition to its use as an alphabetic letter, omicron is occasionally used in technical notation,[citation needed] but its use is limited since both upper case and lower case (Ο ο) are indistinguishable from the Latin letter "o" (O o) and difficult to distinguish from the Arabic numeral "zero" (0).
Mathematics
The
Greek numerals
There were several systems for writing numbers in Greek; the most common form used in late classical era used omicron (either upper or lower case) to represent the value 70.
More generally, the letter omicron is used to mark the fifteenth ordinal position in any Greek-alphabet marked list. So, for example, in Euclid's Elements, when various points in a geometric diagram are marked with letters, it is effectively the same as marking them with numbers, each letter representing the number of its place in the standard alphabet.[a][b]
Astronomy
Omicron is used to designate the fifteenth star in a constellation group, its ordinal placement an irregular function of both magnitude and position.
In Claudius Ptolemy's (c. 100–170) Almagest, tables of sexagesimal numbers 1 ... 59 are represented in the conventional manner for Greek numbers:[c] ′α ′β ... ′νη ′νθ . Since the letter omicron [which represents 70 (′ο) in the standard system] is not used in sexagesimal, it is re-purposed to represent an empty number cell. In some copies, zero cells were just left blank (nothing there, value is zero), but to avoid copying errors, positively marking a zero cell with omicron was preferred, for the same reason that blank cells in modern tables are sometimes filled-in with a long dash (—). Both an omicron and a dash imply that "this isn't a mistake, the cell is actually supposed to be empty". By coincidence, the ancient zero-value omicron (′ο) resembles a modern Hindu-Arabic zero (0).
Medicine
The
History
In the earliest Greek inscriptions, only five vowel letters A E I O Y were used. Vowel length was undifferentiated, with O representing both the short vowel /o/ and the long vowels /o:/ and /ɔː/.[8](p 19) Later, in classical Attic Greek orthography, the three vowels were represented differently, with O representing short /o/, the new letter Ω representing long /ɔː/, and the so-called "spurious diphthong" OY representing long /o:/.[8](pp 56, 71)
Although the Greeks took the character O from the Phoenician letter `ayin, they did not borrow its Phoenician name. Instead, the name of the letter O in classical Attic times was simply the long version of its characteric sound: οὖ (pronounced /o:/) (that of Ω was likewise ὦ).[9][d] By the second and third centuries CE, distinctions between long and short vowels began to disappear in pronunciation, leading to confusion between O and Ω in spelling. It was at this time that the new names of ὂ μικρόν ("small O") for O ὦ μέγα ("great O") for Ω were introduced.[9]
Mispronunciation
During the early outbreak of the Omicron variant of COVID-19, many people unfamiliar with the entire Greek Alphabet (or simply lacking the ability to pronounce or sound out words using phonetics) mispronounced Omicron as "Omnicron" due to the unfamiliarity of the letter, and the use of the prefix "Omni-" in many words.[11][12]
Character encodings
- Greek omicron / Coptic O[13]
Preview | Ο | ο | Ⲟ | ⲟ | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMICRON | GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON | COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER O | COPTIC SMALL LETTER O | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 927 | U+039F | 959 | U+03BF | 11422 | U+2C9E | 11423 | U+2C9F |
UTF-8 | 206 159 | CE 9F | 206 191 | CE BF | 226 178 158 | E2 B2 9E | 226 178 159 | E2 B2 9F |
Numeric character reference | Ο |
Ο |
ο |
ο |
Ⲟ |
Ⲟ |
ⲟ |
ⲟ |
Named character reference | Ο | ο | ||||||
DOS Greek | 142 | 8E | 166 | A6 | ||||
DOS Greek-2 | 190 | BE | 233 | E9 | ||||
Windows 1253 | 207 | CF | 239 | EF |
- Mathematical omicron[14]
These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.
Preview | 𝚶 | 𝛐 | 𝛰 | 𝜊 | 𝜪 | 𝝄 | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC SMALL OMICRON | ||||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120502 | U+1D6B6 | 120528 | U+1D6D0 | 120560 | U+1D6F0 | 120586 | U+1D70A | 120618 | U+1D72A | 120644 | U+1D744 |
UTF-8 | 240 157 154 182 | F0 9D 9A B6 | 240 157 155 144 | F0 9D 9B 90 | 240 157 155 176 | F0 9D 9B B0 | 240 157 156 138 | F0 9D 9C 8A | 240 157 156 170 | F0 9D 9C AA | 240 157 157 132 | F0 9D 9D 84 |
UTF-16 | 55349 57014 | D835 DEB6 | 55349 57040 | D835 DED0 | 55349 57072 | D835 DEF0 | 55349 57098 | D835 DF0A | 55349 57130 | D835 DF2A | 55349 57156 | D835 DF44 |
Numeric character reference | 𝚶 |
𝚶 |
𝛐 |
𝛐 |
𝛰 |
𝛰 |
𝜊 |
𝜊 |
𝜪 |
𝜪 |
𝝄 |
𝝄 |
Preview | 𝝤 | 𝝾 | 𝞞 | 𝞸 | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL OMICRON |
MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL OMICRON | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 120676 | U+1D764 | 120702 | U+1D77E | 120734 | U+1D79E | 120760 | U+1D7B8 |
UTF-8 | 240 157 157 164 | F0 9D 9D A4 | 240 157 157 190 | F0 9D 9D BE | 240 157 158 158 | F0 9D 9E 9E | 240 157 158 184 | F0 9D 9E B8 |
UTF-16 | 55349 57188 | D835 DF64 | 55349 57214 | D835 DF7E | 55349 57246 | D835 DF9E | 55349 57272 | D835 DFB8 |
Numeric character reference | 𝝤 |
𝝤 |
𝝾 |
𝝾 |
𝞞 |
𝞞 |
𝞸 |
𝞸 |
Footnotes
- ^
Greek α) to show that the letter represented a multiple of 1,000 rather than 1.)[citation needed]
- ^ From ]
- ^ Sexagesimal Greek numbers in the Almagest are conventional: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 = ′α ′β ′γ ′δ ′ε ′ϝ ′ζ ′η ′θ and 10 20 30 40 50 = ′ι ′κ ′λ ′μ ′ν . Notice that ancient digamma (ϝ) is used for 6 instead of zeta (ζ, which is used for 7) . Adjacent number-letters add, so all the other numbers are made by letter pairs, such as 29 30 31 = ′κθ ′λ ′λα . The number 59 (′νθ) is the largest value used in any single number cell in sexagesimal. That leaves xi (ξ) and the letters following it ( ξ ο π ϙ ρ σ τ υ φ χ ψ ω ϡ ) free for other use: Ptolemy picked ′ο , which normally was used for 70, to mark empty (zero) cells, perhaps because the word for "nothing", οὐδέν starts with an omicron.
- ^
This is confirmed by the text of the so-called Letter Tragedy of the fifth-century BCE comic poet Callias, and also by a passage in Plato's Cratylus, where Socrates states:
- [W]hen we speak of the letters of the alphabet, you know, we speak their names, not merely the letters themselves, except in the case of four: E, Y, O, and Ω.[10]
References
- ^ "omicron". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- ^ The Greek Alphabet
- S2CID 5230246. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2021-11-30. Retrieved 2021-11-27.
- ^ Martin, Martha Evans (1907). The Friendly Stars (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers. p. 135. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
- ^
Wilk, Stephen R. (2007). Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon (1st ed.). New York; London: ISBN 9780199887736. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
- S2CID 235395073.
- ^ "Classification of Omicron (B.1.1.529): SARS-CoV-2 Variant of Concern". World Health Organization. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-537336-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-521-33555-3.
- ^ Plato. Cratylus. 393.
- ^ "It's 'omicron,' not 'omnicron': COVID variant's spelling doesn't have two Ns". kxan. November 29, 2021. Retrieved February 27, 2024.
- ^ "'Omni is everywhere': Why do so many people struggle to say Omicron? | Language | the Guardian". Retrieved February 27, 2024.
- ^ "Greek and Coptic (Range: 0370–03FF)" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Ver. 8.0. Unicode, Inc. 2015. Retrieved 8 February 2016.
- ^ "Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols (Range: 1D400–1D7FF)" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Ver. 8.0. Unicode, Inc. 2015. Retrieved 8 February 2016.