S
S | |
---|---|
S s | |
સ | |
Variations | ſ |
Other | |
Other letters commonly used with | s(x), sh, sz |
Writing direction | Left-to-Right |
ISO basic Latin alphabet |
---|
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz |
S, or s, is the nineteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ess[a] (pronounced /ˈɛs/), plural esses.[1]
History
Proto-Sinaitic Shin |
Phoenician Shin |
Western Greek Sigma |
Etruscan S |
Latin S |
---|---|---|---|---|
The
The shape of Latin S arises from Greek Σ by dropping one out of the four strokes of that letter. The (angular) S-shape composed of three strokes existed as a variant of the four-stroke letter Σ already in the epigraphy in
The Italic letter was also adopted into
The
Long s
The
In most Western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. In Spain, the change was mainly accomplished between 1760 and 1766. In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793. Printers in the United States stopped using the long s between 1795 and 1810. In English orthography, the London printer John Bell (1745–1831) pioneered the change. His edition of Shakespeare, in 1785, was advertised with the claim that he "ventured to depart from the common mode by rejecting the long 'ſ' in favor of the round one, as being less liable to error....."[5] The Times of London made the switch from the long to the short s with its issue of 10 September 1803. Encyclopædia Britannica's 5th edition, completed in 1817, was the last edition to use the long s.
In German orthography, long s was retained in Fraktur (Schwabacher) type as well as in standard cursive (Sütterlin) well into the 20th century, until official use of that typeface was abolished in 1941.[6] The
Use in writing systems
Languages in italics are not usually written using the Latin alphabet | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Language | Dialect(s) | Pronunciation (IPA) | Environment | Notes |
Mandarin Chinese | Standard | /s/ | Pinyin romanization | |
English | /s/, /z/, silent | See English orthography | ||
French | /s/, /z/, silent | See French orthography | ||
German | /z/, /s/, /ʃ/ | See German orthography | ||
Portuguese | /s/, /z/ | See Portuguese orthography | ||
Spanish | /s/ | |||
Turkish | /s/ |
English
In
Due to
In some words of French origin, ⟨s⟩ is silent, as in 'isle' or 'debris'.
The letter ⟨s⟩ is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common consonant after ⟨t⟩ and ⟨n⟩.[7] It is the most common letter for the first letter of a word in the English language.[8][9]
Final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark of plural nouns. It is the regular ending of English third person present tense verbs.
German
In German, ⟨s⟩ represents:
- A voiced alveolar sibilant/z/ before vowels (except after obstruents), as in 'sich'.
- A voiceless alveolar sibilant/s/ before consonants or when final, as in 'ist' and 'das'.
- A voiceless palato-alveolar fricative/ʃ/ before ⟨p, t⟩ at the beginning of a word or syllable, as in 'spät' and 'Stadt'.
When doubled (⟨ss⟩), it represents a
In the digraph ⟨sch⟩, it represents a
Other languages
In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨s⟩ represents the
In many
In
In some Andalusian dialects of Spanish, it merged with Peninsular Spanish ⟨c⟩ and ⟨z⟩ and is now pronounced /θ/.
In Hungarian, it represents /ʃ/.
In Turkmen, it represents /θ/.
In several Western Romance languages like Spanish and French, final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark of plural nouns.
Other systems
In the
Other uses
- Used in a chemical formula to represent sulfur. For example, SO
2 is sulfur dioxide. - Used in the preferred IUPAC name for a chemical, to indicate a specific enantiomer. For example, "(S)-2-(4-Chloro-2-methylphenoxy)propanoic acid" is one of the enantiomers of mecoprop.
Related characters
- ſ : Latin letter long s, an obsolete variant of s
- ẜ ẝ : Various forms of long s were used for medieval scribal abbreviations[10]
- ẞ ß : German Eszett or "sharp S", derived from a ligature of long s followed by either s or z
- S with ᶳ[13]
- ₛ : Subscript small s was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902[14]
- ˢ: Modifier letter small s is used for phonetic transcription
- ꜱ : Small capital S was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination[10]
- Ʂ ʂ : S with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s[15]
- Ƨ ƨ : Latin letter reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration)
- 𝼩 : Latin small letter s with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.[16]
- IPA-specific symbols related to S: ʃ ɧ[citation needed] ʂ
- Para-IPA version of the IPA fricative ɕ:[17] 𝼞 𐞺
- Ꞅ ꞅ : Insular S
- Ꟗ ꟗ : Used in Middle Scots[18]
- Ꟙ ꟙ : Latin letter Sigmoid S was used in medieval palaeography[19]
Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations
- $ : Dollar sign
- ₷ : Spesmilo
- § : Section sign
- ℠ : Service mark symbol
- ∫ : Integral symbol, short for summation (derived from long s)
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
- 𐤔 : Semitic letter Shin, from which the following symbols originally derive
- archaic Greek Sigma could be written with different numbers of angles and strokes. Besides the classical form with four strokes (), a three-stroke form resembling an angular Latin S () was commonly found, and was particularly characteristic of some mainland Greek varieties including Attic and several "red" alphabets.
- Σ: classical Greek letter Sigma
- Ϲ ϲ: Greek lunate sigma
- Ⲥ ⲥ : Copticletter sima
- С с : Cyrillic letter Es, derived from a form of sigma
- Ⲥ ⲥ :
- Ϲ ϲ: Greek
- 𐌔 : Old Italicletter S, includes the variants also found in the archaic Greek letter
- S: Latin letter S
- ᛊ, ᛋ, ᛌ : sowilo, which is derived from Old Italic S
- 𐍃: Gothic letter sigil
- Σ: classical Greek letter Sigma
- archaic Greek Sigma could be written with different numbers of angles and strokes. Besides the classical form with four strokes (), a three-stroke form resembling an angular Latin S () was commonly found, and was particularly characteristic of some mainland Greek varieties including Attic and several "red" alphabets.
- Ս : Se
Other representations
Computing
Preview | S | s | S | s | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S | LATIN SMALL LETTER S | FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S | FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER S | ||||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 83 | U+0053 | 115 | U+0073 | 65331 | U+FF33 | 65363 | U+FF53 |
UTF-8 | 83 | 53 | 115 | 73 | 239 188 179 | EF BC B3 | 239 189 147 | EF BD 93 |
Numeric character reference | S |
S |
s |
s |
S |
S |
s |
s |
ASCII 1 | 83 | 53 | 115 | 73 |
- 1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
Other representations
NATO phonetic
|
Morse code |
Sierra |
ⓘ |
Signal flag | Flag semaphore | American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling) | British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling )
|
Braille dots-234 Unified English Braille |
See also
- Cool S
- See about Ⓢ in Enclosed Alphanumerics
Notes
- ^ Spelled 'es'- in compound words
References
- ^ "S", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "ess," op. cit.
- ^ "corresponds etymologically (in part, at least) to original Semitic ṯ (th), which was pronounced s in South Canaanite" Albright, W. F., "The Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from Sinai and their Decipherment," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 110 (1948), p. 15. The interpretation as "tooth" is now prevalent, but not entirely certain. The Encyclopaedia Judaica of 1972 reported that the letter represented a "composite bow".
- ^ Woodard, Roger D. (2006). "Alphabet". In Wilson, Nigel Guy. Encyclopedia of ancient Greece. London: Routldedge. p. 38.
- ^ "...τὠυτὸ γράμμα, τὸ Δωριέες μὲν σὰν καλέουσι ,Ἴωνες δὲ σίγμα" ('...the same letter, which the Dorians call "San", but the Ionians "Sigma"...'; Herodotus, Histories 1.139); cf. Nick Nicholas, Non-Attic letters Archived 2012-06-28 at archive.today.
- ^ Stanley Morison, A Memoir of John Bell, 1745–1831 (1930, Cambridge Univ. Press) page 105; Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use – a study in survivals (2nd. ed, 1951, Harvard University Press) page 293.
- ^
Order of 3 January 1941 to all public offices, signed by Martin Bormann.
Kapr, Albert (1993). Fraktur: Form und Geschichte der gebrochenen Schriften. Mainz: H. Schmidt. p. 81. ISBN 3-87439-260-0.
- ^ "English Letter Frequency". Archived from the original on 2014-05-23. Retrieved 2014-05-21.
- ^ "Letter Frequencies in the English Language". Retrieved July 2, 2021.
- ^ "Which English Letter Has Maximum Words". June 25, 2012.
- ^ a b Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Everson, Michael; Lilley, Chris (2019-05-26). "L2/19-179: Proposal for the addition of four Latin characters for Gaulish" (PDF).
- ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
- ^ West, Andrew; Chan, Eiso; Everson, Michael (2017-01-16). "L2/17-013: Proposal to encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-12-26. Retrieved 2019-03-08.
- ^ Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam" (PDF).
- ^ Miller, Kirk (2021-01-11). "L2/21-041: Unicode request for additional para-IPA letters" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael (2019-04-25). "L2/19-180R: Proposal to add two characters for Middle Scots to the UCS" (PDF).
- ^ Everson, Michael (2020-10-01). "L2/20-269: Proposal to add two SIGMOID S characters for mediaeval palaeography" (PDF).
External links
- Media related to S at Wikimedia Commons
- The dictionary definition of S at Wiktionary
- The dictionary definition of s at Wiktionary
- . . 1914.