A
The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet.
 |
|
| Egyptian hieroglyphic ox head | Proto-semitic ox head |
|
Greek alpha |
| Phoenician aleph | Greek alpha |
|
|
| Etruscan A | Roman A |
The letter A probably started as a pictogram of an ox head in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-semitic alphabet.
By 1500 BC, the Phoenicians had given the the letter a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the Hebrew aleph.
When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other Semitic languages, so they used the sign for the vowel /a/, and changed its name to alpha. In the earliest Greek inscriptions, dating to the 8th century BC, the letter rests upon its side, but in the Greek alphabet of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.
The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to what is now Italy and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin, and the resulting letter was preserved in the modern Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including English.
|
| |
| Blackletter A | Uncial A | |
|
|
|
| Modern Roman A | Modern Italic A | Modern Script A |
The modern lowercase letter a derives from Greek handwriting, which evolved from a form similar to the current capital to a circular shape with a projection by the 4th century.
In English, the letter A by itself usual denotes the lax open front unrounded vowel (IPA /æ/), as in pad, the open back unrounded (IPA /ɑ/) or, in concert with a later e, the close-mid front unrounded vowel (IPA /e/), as in ace, due to effects of the Great vowel shift.
In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter a denotes either a open central unrounded vowel (IPA /a/), or an open back unrounded vowel (IPA /ɑ/.
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of the letter A denote various vowels. In X-SAMPA, capital A denotes the open back unrounded vowel and lowercase a denotes the open front unrounded vowel.
Alpha represents the letter A in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
The ASCII code for capital A is 65 and for lowercase a is 97.
A is also:
- A musical note
- The English indefinite article, see A, an
- A Greek prefix (alpha privativum) used in English, German and Romance languages meaning "not", "devoid of"
- The stock symbol for Agilent Technologies Incorporated.
- The HTML element for an anchor tag.
- An album by Jethro Tull, see A
- An Italian film, A, made in 1969
- The heater (filament) power supply (originally a battery) of vacuum tube circuitry.
- The symbol for the SI unit ampere or amp
- With a ring over (Å), the symbol for the unit angstrom
- The symbol for the surface area unit are (a)
- A is one of the Blood types.
- In many education systems, a grade of A typically represents the highest score that students can achieve. (sometimes coupled with a plus sign - i.e., A+, or a number - e.g., A1)
- In Shipping, A1 is a symbol used to denote quality of construction and material. In the various shipping registers ships are classed and given a rating after an official examination, and assigned a classification mark, which appears in addition to other particulars in those registers after the name of the ship. See Shipbuilding. It is popularly used to indicate the highest degree of excellence.
- In syllogisms, the letter A is used as a symbol for the universal affirmative proposition in the general form "all x is y." The letters I, E and O are used respectively for the particular affirmative "some x is y," the universal negative "no x is y," and the particular negative "some x is not y." The use of these letters is generally derived from the vowels of the two Latin verbs affirmo (or AIo), "I assert," and nego, "I deny." The use of the symbols dates from the 13th century, though some authorities trace their origin to the Greek logicians. A is also used frequently in abbreviations.
- The above usage is copied in mathematics and logic, the symbol ∀ (an inverted letter A), called the universal quantifier, is used to mean "for all ...". Example: ∀x x+x=2x.
- The Oakland Athletics are often simply referred to as the "As."
See also
ª, À, Á, Â, Ã, Ä (Ae), Å (Aa), Æ, Ă
Two-letter combinations starting with A: