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O, or o, is the fifteenth
letter Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
and the fourth
vowel letter A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
in the
Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''o'' (pronounced ), plural ''oes''.


History

Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was '' ʿeyn'', meaning "eye", and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding
Egyptian hieroglyph 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 ...
, cf.
Proto-Sinaitic script Proto-Sinaitic (also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite when found in Canaan, the North Semitic alphabet, or Early Alphabetic) is considered the earliest trace of alphabetic writing and the common ancestor of both the Ancient South Arabian ...
). Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the cognate Arabic letter ع ''ʿayn''. The use of this Phoenician letter for a vowel sound is due to the early
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
s, which adopted the letter as O "omicron" to represent the vowel . The letter was adopted with this value in the
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
early Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
. In Greek, a variation of the form later came to distinguish this long sound (
Omega Omega (; capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the twenty-fourth and final letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The wo ...
, meaning "large O") from the short o (Omicron, meaning "small o"). Greek omicron gave rise to the corresponding Cyrillic letter O and the early Italic letter to runic ᛟ. Even alphabets that are not derived from Semitic tend to have similar forms to represent this sound; for example, the creators of the Afaka and Ol Chiki scripts, each invented in different parts of the world in the last century, both attributed their vowels for 'O' to the shape of the mouth when making this sound.


Use in writing systems


English

The letter is the fourth most common letter in the
English alphabet The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word ''alphabet'' is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, '' alpha'' and '' beta''. ...
. Like the other English vowel letters, it has associated "long" and "short" pronunciations. The "long" as in ''boat'' is actually most often a
diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...
(realized dialectically anywhere from to ). In English there is also a "short" as in ''fox'', , which sounds slightly different in different dialects. In most dialects of
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, it is either an open-mid back rounded vowel or an open back rounded vowel ; in
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, it is most commonly an unrounded back to a central vowel . Common digraphs include , which represents either or ; or , which typically represents the diphthong , and , , and which represent a variety of pronunciations depending on context and etymology. In other contexts, especially before a letter with a minim, may represent the sound , as in 'son' or 'love'. It can also represent the
semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...
as in ''choir'' or ''quinoa.'' In English, the letter in isolation before a noun, usually capitalized, marks the vocative case, as in the titles to
O Canada "O Canada" (french: Ô Canada, italic=no) is the national anthem of Canada. The song was originally commissioned by Lieutenant Governor of Quebec Théodore Robitaille for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony; Calixa Lavallée composed the mus ...
or
O Captain! My Captain! "O Captain! My Captain!" is an extended metaphor poem written by Walt Whitman in 1865 about Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the death of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln. Well received upon publication, the poem was Whitman's first to be Anth ...
or certain verses of the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
.


Other languages

is commonly associated with the open-mid back rounded vowel , mid back rounded vowel or close-mid back rounded vowel in many languages. Other languages use for various values, usually back vowels which are at least partly open. Derived letters such as and have been created for the alphabets of some languages to distinguish values that were not present in Latin and Greek, particularly rounded front vowels.


Other systems

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 ...
, represents the close-mid back rounded vowel.


Related characters


Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet


Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

* Ꝋ ꝋ : Forms of O were used for medieval scribal abbreviations *∅ : empty set symbol *º : Masculine ordinal indicator *Calligraphic ''O'' (𝒪, 𝓸):
Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols is a Unicode block comprising styled forms of Latin alphabet, Latin and Greek alphabet, Greek letters and decimal numerical digit, digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions with different ...


Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

*𐤏 : Semitic letter Ayin, from which the following symbols originally derive **Ο ο : Greek letter
Omicron Omicron (; uppercase Ο, lowercase ο, ell, όμικρον) is the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel in contras ...
*** :
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 O, which derives from Greek omicron ***О о :
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter O, which also derives from Omicron ***𐌏 : Old Italic O, which derives from Greek Omicron, and is the ancestor of modern Latin O ***Օ օ : Armenian letter O


Computing codes

: 1


Other representations


See also

*
Oxygen Oxygen is the chemical element with the symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as wel ...
, symbol O, a chemical element * O mark *
Open O Open o or Turned c (majuscule: Ɔ, minuscule: ɔ) is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it represents the open-mid back rounded vowel. It is used in the orthographies of many African languages usi ...
(Ɔ ɔ) *The letter O is commonly misplaced with the number 0, as they appear quite identical.


References


External links

* {{Latin alphabet, O} ISO basic Latin letters Vowel letters