M, or m, is the thirteenth 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 ''em'' (pronounced ), plural ''ems''.

History

The letter M is derived from the Phoenician

Mem Mem (also spelled Meem, Meme, or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew mēm , Aramaic Mem , Syriac mīm ܡ, Arabic mīm and Phoenician mēm . Its sound value is . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek mu ...

, via the Greek Mu (Μ, μ).

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 ** ...

Mem is most likely derived from a " Proto-Sinaitic" ( Bronze Age) adoption of the "water" ideogram in

Egyptian writing Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...

. The Egyptian sign had the

acrophonic Acrophony (; Greek: ἄκρος ''akros'' uppermost + φωνή ''phone'' sound) is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the name ...

value , from the Egyptian word for "water", ''nt''; the adoption as the Semitic letter for was presumably also on

grounds, from the

word for "water", '' *mā(y)-''.

Use in writing systems

The letter represents the

bilabial nasal The voiced bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is m. The bilabial nasal occurs in ...

consonant sound in the orthography of Latin as well as in that of many modern languages, and also 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 ...

. In English, the Oxford English Dictionary (first edition) says that is sometimes a vowel, in words like ''spasm'' and in the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

''-ism''. In modern terminology, this is described as a

syllabic consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...

(IPA ). In Washo, lower-case represents a typical em sound, while upper-case represents a voiceless em sound.

Other uses

* The Roman numeral M represents the number

1000 1000 or thousand may refer to: * 1000 (number), a natural number * AD 1000, a leap year in the Julian calendar * 1000 BC, a year of the Before Christ era * 1000 metres, a middle-distance running event * 1000°, a German electronic dance music magazi ...

, though it was not used in Roman times. There is, however, scant evidence that the letter was later introduced in the early centuries A.D. by the Romans. * Unit prefix M (mega), meaning one million times, and m (milli) meaning one-thousandth. * m is the standard abbreviation for metre (or meter) in the

International System of Units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. E ...

(SI). However, m is also used as an abbreviation for

mile The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 English ...

. * M is used as the unit abbreviation for molarity.M (James Bond) is a fictional character in

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer who is best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., a ...

's James Bond book and

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

series. * In typography, an

em dash The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

is a punctuation symbol whose width is equal to that of a capital letter M.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

*M 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: Ḿ ḿ Ṁ ṁ Ṃ ṃ M̃ m̃ ᵯ * IPA-specific symbols related to M: *Ɱ : Capital M with hook * Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to M: ** ** ** ** ** *Some symbols related to M were used by the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902: ** ** *The

Teuthonista Teuthonista is a phonetic transcription system used predominantly for the transcription of (High) German dialects. It is very similar to other Central European transcription systems from the early 20th century. The base characters are mostly bas ...

phonetic transcription system uses *Other variations used for phonetic transcription:

ᶆ 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 ...

ᶬ Unicode has subscripted and superscripted versions of a number of characters including a full set of Arabic numerals. These characters allow any polynomial, chemical and certain other equations to be represented in plain text without using any ...

ᶭ *Ɯ ɯ : Turned M *ꟽ : Inverted M was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for ''mulier'' (woman) *ꟿ : Archaic M was used in ancient Roman texts to abbreviate the personal name 'Manius' (A regular capital M was used for the more common personal name 'Marcus') *ℳ : currency symbol for Mark

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

*𐤌 :

letter

, from which the following symbols originally derive **Μ μ : Greek letter Mu, from which M derives *** :

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 Me, which derives from Greek Mu ***М м :

Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...

letter Em, also derived from Mu ***𐌌 : Old Italic M, which derives from Greek Mu, and is the ancestor of modern Latin M **** : Runic letter Mannaz, which derives from old Italic M *** :

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 manna, which derives from Greek Mu

Ligatures and abbreviations

*₥ : Mill (currency) *™ : Trademark symbol *℠ : Service mark symbol

Computing codes

: ¹

Other representations

References

External links

* * * {{Latin alphabet, M} ISO basic Latin letters