Brstjjy

K
K k
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[k] [kʰ] [kʼ] [ɡ] /keɪ/
Unicode value	U+004B, U+006B
Alphabetical position	11
History
Development	Κ κ ϰ 𐌊 K k
Time period	~-700 to present
Descendants	• K  • Ʞ  • ₭  • k
Sisters	К כ ך ک ك ܟ ࠊ 𐎋 ከ Կ կ Հ հ Խ խ
Variations	(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	k(x)
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

ISO basic Latin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz v t e

K (named kay /keɪ/)^[1] is the eleventh letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph D	Proto-Semitic K	Phoenician K	Etruscan K	Greek Kappa

The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ (kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand.^[2] This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing D in the Egyptian word for hand, d-r-t. The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.^[3]

In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used to represent /k/ or /ɡ/ before a rounded vowel, K before /a/, and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms such as Kalendae, "the calends".^[4]

After Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.

Use in writing systems

English

Today, English is the only Germanic language to productively use "hard" ⟨c⟩ (outside the digraph ⟨ck⟩) rather than ⟨k⟩ (although Dutch uses it in loaned words of Latin origin, and the pronunciation of these words follows the same hard/soft distinction as in English).^{[citation needed]} The letter ⟨k⟩ is silent at the start of an English word when it comes before the letter ⟨n⟩, as in the words "knight," "knife," "knot," "know," and "knee". Like J, X, Q, and Z, K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency of about 0.8% in words.

Number

The SI prefix for a thousand is kilo-, officially abbreviated as k—for instance, prefixed to "metre" or its abbreviation m, kilometre or km signifies a thousand metres. As such, people occasionally represent numbers in a non-standard notation by replacing the last three zeros of the general numeral with "K": for instance, 30K for 30,000.

Other languages

In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /k/ (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨k⟩ for the voiceless velar plosive.

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

• 𐤊 : Semitic letter Kaph, from which the following symbols originally derive


• Κ κ/ϰ : Greek letter Kappa, from which K derives


• К к : Cyrillic letter Ka, also derived from Kappa


• K with diacritics: Ƙ ƙ Ꝁ ꝁ Ḱ ḱ Ǩ ǩ Ḳ ḳ Ķ ķ ᶄ Ⱪ ⱪ Ḵ ḵ
  


• The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet uses various forms of the letter K:^[5]
  
  
  • 
    .mw-parser-output .monospaced{font-family:monospace,monospace}
    U+1D0B ᴋ .mw-parser-output .smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}
    LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL K
    
  
  
  • 
    
    U+1D37 ᴷ
    MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL K
    
  
  
  • 
    
    U+1D4F ᵏ
    MODIFIER LETTER SMALL K
    
  
  
  
  


• ₖ : Subscript small k was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[6]
  


• Ʞ ʞ : Turned capital and small k were used in transcriptions of the Dakota language in publications of the American Board of Ethnology in the late 19th century.^[7] Turned small k was also used for a velar click in the International Phonetic Alphabet but its use was withdrawn in 1970.

Ligatures and abbreviations

• ₭ : Lao kip
  


• Ꝃ ꝃ, Ꝅ ꝅ, Ꞣ ꞣ : Various forms of K were used for medieval scribal abbreviations^[8]
  

Computing codes

¹Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and nMacintosh families of encodings.

Other representation

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Kilo	–·–

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-13

Other usage

• "K" replacing "C" in satiric misspelling.


• K is the unit symbol for the kelvin, used to mesure thermodynamic temperature.


• K is the chemical symbol for the element potassium (K is an abbreviation of kalium, the Latin name for potassium).


• 
  Triangle K.


• 
  Unit prefix k, meaning 1000 times.


• K is the name of the principal character in Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.


• In chess notation, the letter K represents the King (WK for White King, BK for Black King).


• In baseball scoring, the letter K is used to represent a strikeout. A forwards oriented K represents a "strikeout swinging"; a backwards oriented K () represents a "strikeout looking".


• As abbreviation for OK, often used in emails and short text messages.


• K is used as a slang term for Ketamine among recreational drug users.


• In the CMYK color model, K represents black ink.


• In International Morse code it is used to mean "over".^[9]
  


• In fracture mechanics, K is used to represent the stress intensity factor.


• In physics, k usually stands for Boltzmann's constant
  


• 
  K (logic).

References

External links

• 
  Media related to K at Wikimedia Commons


• 
  The dictionary definition of K at Wiktionary


• 
  The dictionary definition of k at Wiktionary