E
E e
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originLatin language
Phonetic usage
Unicode codepointU+0045, U+0065
Alphabetical position5
History
Development
Time periodc. 700 BC to present
Descendants
Sisters
Other
Other letters commonly used withee, e(x), e(x)(y)
Writing directionLeft-to-Right

E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel 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 e (pronounced /ˈiː/); plural es, Es or E's.[1] It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, including Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.[2][3][4][5][6]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph
qʼ		 Proto-Sinaitic Proto-Canaanite

hillul

 Phoenician
He		 Etruscan
E		 Greek
Epsilon		 Latin/
Cyrillic
E
A28
 Latin E

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter hê, which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul 'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words); in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨e⟩ in European languages

English

Although Middle English spelling used ⟨e⟩ to represent long and short /e/, the Great Vowel Shift changed long /eː/ (as in me or bee) to /iː/ while short /ɛ/ (as in met or bed) remained a mid vowel. In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as /ɪ/ or /ə/. In other cases, the letter is silent, generally at the end of words like queue.

Other languages

In the orthography of many languages it represents either [e], [e̞], [ɛ], or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich, ⟨e⟩ represents a mid-central vowel /ə/. Digraphs with ⟨e⟩ are common to indicate either diphthongs or monophthongs, such as ⟨ea⟩ or ⟨ee⟩ for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, ⟨ei⟩ for /aɪ/ in German, and ⟨eu⟩ for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨e⟩ for the close-mid front unrounded vowel or the mid front unrounded vowel.

Most common letter

'E' is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English language alphabet and several other European languages,[7] which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. In the story "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe, a character figures out a random character code by remembering that the most used letter in English is E. This makes it a hard and popular letter to use when writing lipograms. Ernest Vincent Wright's Gadsby (1939) is considered a "dreadful" novel, and supposedly "at least part of Wright's narrative issues were caused by language limitations imposed by the lack of E."[8] Both Georges Perec's novel A Void (La Disparition) (1969) and its English translation by Gilbert Adair omit 'e' and are considered better works.[9]

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

  • 𐤄 : Semitic letter He (letter), from which the following symbols originally derive
    • Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon, from which the following symbols originally derive
      • Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye
      • Є є : Ukrainian Ye
      • Э э : Cyrillic letter E
      • Ⲉ ⲉ : Coptic letter Ei
      • 𐌄 : Old Italic E, which is the ancestor of modern Latin E
        • ᛖ : Runic letter Ehwaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic E
      • 𐌴 : Gothic letter eyz

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Code points

Character information
PreviewEe
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E LATIN SMALL LETTER E
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode69U+0045101U+0065
UTF-8694510165
Numeric character referenceEEee
EBCDIC family197C513385
ASCII 1694510165
1 Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'e' is signed by extending the index finger of the right hand touching the tip of index on the left hand, with all fingers of left hand open.

Use as a number

A scientific calculator display showing the Avogadro constant (6.02214076×1023 reciprocal moles) in E notation
  • In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, "E" corresponds to the number 14 in decimal (base 10) counting.
  • "e" is also commonly used to denote Euler's number.

See also

  • "E notation" is used by scientific calculators to indicate a power of ten multiplier.
  • E-number – Codes for food additives

References

  1. ↑ "E". Oxford Dictionary of English (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2010. ISBN 9780199571123. noun (plural Es or E's)
  2. ↑ Kelk, Brian. "Letter frequencies". Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2022-02-02.
  3. ↑ Lewand, Robert. "Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text". Cryptographical Mathematics. Central College. Archived from the original on 2008-07-08. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  4. ↑ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in Spanish". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived from the original on 2008-05-11. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  5. ↑ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in French". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived from the original on 2008-03-12. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  6. ↑ "Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in German". Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived from the original on 2012-06-28. Retrieved 2008-06-25.
  7. ↑ Grigas, Gintautas; Juškevičienė, Anita (2018-03-26). "Letter Frequency Analysis of Languages Using Latin Alphabet". International Linguistics Research. 1 (1): 18. doi:10.30560/ilr.v1n1p18. ISSN 2576-2982.
  8. ↑ Ross Eckler, Making the Alphabet Dance: Recreational Word Play. New York: St. Martin's Press (1996): 3
  9. ↑ Eckler (1996): 3. Perec's novel "was so well written that at least some reviewers never realized the existence of a letter constraint."
  10. 1 2 3 4 Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  11. ↑ Lemonen, Therese; Ruppel, Klaas; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Sandström, Caroline (2006-01-26). "L2/06-036: Proposal to encode characters for Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-07-06. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  12. 1 2 Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08). "L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-07-30.
  13. ↑ Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  14. ↑ Ruppel, Klaas; Rueter, Jack; Kolehmainen, Erkki I. (2006-04-07). "L2/06-215: Proposal for Encoding 3 Additional Characters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-07-06. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  15. ↑ Anderson, Deborah; Everson, Michael (2004-06-07). "L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  16. ↑ Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
  • Media related to E at Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition of E at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of e at Wiktionary
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