S, or s, is the nineteenth
letter in 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'' (pronounced ), plural ''esses''.
History
Origin
Northwest Semitic šîn represented a
voiceless postalveolar fricative (as in 'ip'). It originated most likely as a
pictogram of a
tooth () and represented the phoneme via the acrophonic principle.
Ancient Greek did not have a phoneme, so the derived Greek letter
sigma
Sigma (; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; grc-gre, σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as ...
() came to represent the
voiceless alveolar sibilant .
While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician ''šîn'', its name ''sigma'' is taken from the letter ''
samekh
Samekh (Phoenician ''sāmek'' ; Hebrew ''samekh'' , Syriac ''semkaṯ'') is the fifteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including the Hebrew alphabet.
Samekh represents a voiceless alveolar fricative . Unlike most Semitic consonants, the pro ...
'', while the shape and position of ''samekh'' but name of ''šîn'' is continued in the ''
xi''.
Within Greek, the name of ''sigma'' was influenced by its association with the Greek word (earlier ) "to hiss". The original name of the letter "sigma" may have been ''san'', but due to the complicated early history of the Greek epichoric alphabets, "san" came to be identified as a separate letter,
Ϻ.
Herodotus reports that "San" was the name given by the
Dorians to the same letter called "Sigma" by the
Ionians.
The
Western Greek alphabet used in
Cumae was adopted by the
Etruscans and
Latins
The Latins were originally an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy from Latium. As Roman power and colonization spread Latin culture during the Roman Republic.
Latins culturally "Romanized" or "Latinized" the rest of Italy, and the word Latin ...
in the 7th century BC, over the following centuries developing into a range of
Old Italic alphabets
The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italy, Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, ...
including the
Etruscan alphabet and the early
Latin alphabet.
In
Etruscan __NOTOC__
Etruscan may refer to:
Ancient civilization
*The Etruscan language, an extinct language in ancient Italy
*Something derived from or related to the Etruscan civilization
**Etruscan architecture
**Etruscan art
**Etruscan cities
**Etruscan ...
, the value of Greek sigma (𐌔) was maintained, while san (𐌑)
represented a separate phoneme, most likely (transliterated as ''ś'').
The early Latin alphabet adopted sigma, but not san, as Old Latin did not have a phoneme.
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
Western Greek alphabets, and the three and four strokes variants existed alongside one another in the classical Etruscan alphabet. In other
Italic alphabets (Venetic, Lepontic), the letter could be represented as a zig-zagging line of any number between three and six strokes.
The Italic letter was also adopted into
Elder Futhark
The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Peri ...
, as ''
Sowilō'' (), and appears with four to eight strokes in the earliest runic inscriptions, but is occasionally reduced to three strokes () from the later 5th century, and appears regularly with three strokes in
Younger Futhark.
Long s
The
minuscule form ſ, called the
long ''s'', developed in the early medieval period, within the
Visigothic and
Carolingian
The Carolingian dynasty (; known variously as the Carlovingians, Carolingus, Carolings, Karolinger or Karlings) was a Frankish noble family named after Charlemagne, grandson of mayor Charles Martel and a descendant of the Arnulfing and Pippin ...
hands, with predecessors in the
half-uncial and
cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
scripts of
Late Antiquity. It remained standard in western writing throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types.
It existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short" ''s'', which was at the time only used at the end of words.
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....." ''
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
(, " script") is the last widely used form of , the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter (most notably ') typefaces. Graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Scien ...
) well into the 20th century, and was officially abolished in 1941.
The
ligature of ''ſs'' (or ''ſz'') was retained, however, giving rise to the ''
Eszett'' , in contemporary German orthography.
Use in writing systems
The letter is the seventh most common letter in
English and the third-most common consonant after and . It is the most common letter for the first letter of a word in the English language.
In English and several other languages, primarily
Western Romance ones like
Spanish and
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, final is the usual mark of
plural nouns. It is the regular ending of English
third person
Third person, or third-person, may refer to:
* Third person (grammar), a point of view (in English, ''he'', ''she'', ''it'', and ''they'')
** Illeism, the act of referring to oneself in the third person
* Third-person narrative, a perspective in p ...
present tense verbs.
represents the
voiceless alveolar or
voiceless dental sibilant in most languages as well as in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
. It also commonly represents the
voiced alveolar or
voiced dental sibilant , as in
Portuguese ''mesa'' (table) or English 'rose' and 'bands', or it may represent the
voiceless palato-alveolar fricative , as in most
Portuguese dialects when syllable-finally, in
Hungarian, in
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
(before , ) and some English words as 'sugar', since
yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
became a dominant feature, and , as in English 'measure' (also because of yod-coalescence),
European Portuguese ''Islão'' (Islam) or, in many sociolects of
Brazilian Portuguese, ''esdrúxulo'' (
proparoxytone) in some
Andalusian dialects, it merged with
Peninsular Spanish
Peninsular Spanish ( es, español peninsular) (also known as the Spanish of Spain ( es, español de España, links=no), European Spanish ( es, español europeo, links=no), Iberian Spanish ( es, español ibérico, links=no) or Spanish Spanish ( es ...
and and is now pronounced . In some English words of French origin, the letter is silent, as in 'isle' or 'debris'. In
Turkmen
Turkmen, Türkmen, Turkoman, or Turkman may refer to:
Peoples Historical ethnonym
* Turkoman (ethnonym), ethnonym used for the Oghuz Turks during the Middle Ages
Ethnic groups
* Turkmen in Anatolia and the Levant (Seljuk and Ottoman-Turkish desc ...
, represents .
The
digraph for English arises in Middle English (alongside
), replacing the Old English digraph. Similarly, Old High German was replaced by in Early Modern High German orthography.
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
*ſ : Latin letter
long s, an obsolete variant of s
*ẜ ẝ : Various forms of long s were used for medieval
scribal abbreviations
*ẞ ß :
German Eszett or "sharp S", derived from a ligature of long s followed by either s or z
*S with
diacritic
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s:
Ś ś Ṡ ṡ ẛ Ṩ ṩ Ṥ ṥ Ṣ ṣ S̩ s̩ Ꞩ ꞩ Ꟊꟊ Ŝ ŝ Ṧ ṧ Š š Ş ş Ș ș S̈ s̈ ᶊ
The palatal hook () is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from ...
Ȿ ȿ ᵴ
ᶳ
Unicode has subscript and superscript, subscripted and superscripted versions of a number of characters including a full set of Arabic numerals. These characters allow any polynomial, Chemical equation, chemical and certain other equations to be ...
*ₛ : Subscript small s was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902
*
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
*Ʂ ʂ : S with hook, used for writing
Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of
pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s
*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
The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world.
The Soc ...
in the early 20th century for
romanization of the
Malayalam language.
*
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
-specific symbols related to S:
* Para-IPA version of the
IPA
IPA commonly refers to:
* India pale ale, a style of beer
* International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation
* Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound
IPA may also refer to:
Organizations International
* Insolvency Practitioners ...
fricative ɕ:
𝼞 𐞺
*Ꞅ ꞅ :
Insular
Insular is an adjective used to describe:
* An island
* Someone who is isolated and parochial
Insular may also refer to:
Sub-national territories or regions
* Insular Chile
* Insular region of Colombia
* Insular Ecuador, administratively known ...
S
*Ꟗ ꟗ : Used in
Middle Scots
*Ꟙ ꟙ : Latin letter Sigmoid S was used in
medieval palaeography
Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations
*$ :
Dollar sign
*₷ :
Spesmilo
The ''spesmilo'' (, plural ''spesmiloj'' ) is an obsolete decimal international currency, proposed in 1907 by René de Saussure and used before World War I by a few British and Swiss banks, primarily the Ĉekbanko Esperantista.
The ''spesmilo ...
*§ :
Section sign
*℠ :
Service mark symbol
*∫ :
Integral symbol
The integral symbol:
: (Unicode), \displaystyle \int (LaTeX)
is used to denote integrals and antiderivatives in mathematics, especially in calculus.
History
The notation was introduced by the German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1 ...
, short for
summation
In mathematics, summation is the addition of a sequence of any kind of numbers, called ''addends'' or ''summands''; the result is their ''sum'' or ''total''. Beside numbers, other types of values can be summed as well: functions, vectors, mat ...
(derived from long s)
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
* 𐤔 :
Semitic
Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta.
Semitic may also refer to:
Religions
* Abrahamic religions
** ...
letter
Shin
Shin may refer to:
Biology
* The front part of the human leg below the knee
* Shinbone, the tibia, the larger of the two bones in the leg below the knee in vertebrates
Names
* Shin (given name) (Katakana: シン, Hiragana: しん), a Japanese ...
, from which the following symbols originally derive
**
archaic Greek
Archaic Greece was the period in Greek history lasting from circa 800 BC to the second Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC, following the Greek Dark Ages and succeeded by the Classical period. In the archaic period, Greeks settled across the M ...
Sigma
Sigma (; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; grc-gre, σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as ...
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
Sigma (; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; grc-gre, σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used as ...
****Ϲ ϲ: Greek
lunate sigma
***** :
Coptic
Coptic may refer to:
Afro-Asia
* Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya
* Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century
* Coptic alphabet ...
letter sima
*****С с :
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
letter
Es, derived from a form of sigma
***𐌔 :
Old Italic letter S, includes the variants also found in the archaic Greek letter
****S:
Latin letter S
**** :
Runic letter
sowilo, which is derived from Old Italic S
***:
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter sigil
* Ս :
Armenian letter Se
Computing codes
:
1
Other representations
Chemistry
The letter S is used:
* In a
chemical formula to represent
sulfur
Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...
. For example, is
sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide (IUPAC-recommended spelling) or sulphur dioxide (traditional Commonwealth English) is the chemical compound with the formula . It is a toxic gas responsible for the odor of burnt matches. It is released naturally by volcanic activ ...
.
* In the
preferred IUPAC name for a chemical, to indicate a specific
enantiomer
In chemistry, an enantiomer ( /ɪˈnænti.əmər, ɛ-, -oʊ-/ ''ih-NAN-tee-ə-mər''; from Ancient Greek ἐνάντιος ''(enántios)'' 'opposite', and μέρος ''(méros)'' 'part') – also called optical isomer, antipode, or optical ant ...
. For example, "(S)-2-(4-Chloro-2-methylphenoxy)propanoic acid" is one of the enantiomers of
mecoprop.
See also
*
Cool S
The Cool S (also known as the Stussy S, Super S, Superman S, Universal S, Pointy S, Middle School S, Graffiti S, and by many other names) is a graffiti sign in popular culture that is typically doodled on children's notebooks or graffitied on wall ...
* See about Ⓢ in
Enclosed Alphanumerics
References
External links
*
*
*
*
{{Latin alphabet, S}
ISO basic Latin letters