Definition:
An alphabetic symbol such as A or a. See also:
- Grapheme
- Capital Letter
- Silent Letter
- Lower Case
- Diacritic Mark
- Which Words in a Title Should Be Capitalized?
Etymology:
From the Latin, "a shape or symbol used in writing"Examples and Observations:
- "The symbol A indicated in Semitic a glottal consonant that did not exist in Greek. Its semitic name was 'aleph, the initial apostrophe here indicating the consonant in question; and, because the name means 'ox,' it has been thought to represent an ox's head, though interpreting many of the Semitic signs as pictorial characters presents as yet insuperable difficulties (Gelb 1963, pp. 140-41). By ignoring the initial Semitic consonant of the letter's name, the Greeks adopted this symbol as a vowel, which they called alpha. Beth was ultimately somewhat modified in form to B by the Greeks, who wrote it and other reversible letters facing in either direction; in the early days of writing they wrote from right to left, as the Semitic peoples usually did and as the Henrew is still written. From the Greek modifications of the Semitic names of the first two letters, the word alphabet is ultimately derived."
(Thomas Pyles and John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 3rd ed., 1982) - "A student can win twelve letters at a university without learning how to write one."
(Robert Maynard Hutchins) - "Egotism is an alphabet of one letter."
(Scottish proverb)
