M, or m, is the thirteenth letter 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 ...

, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''em'' (pronounced ), plural ''ems''.

History

The letter M is derived from the Phoenician

Mem Mem (also spelled Meem, Meme, or Mim) is the thirteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Hebrew mēm , Aramaic Mem , Syriac mīm ܡ, Arabic mīm and Phoenician mēm . Its sound value is . The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek ...

, via the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Mu (Μ, μ). Semitic Mem is most likely derived from a " Proto-Sinaitic" (

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

) adoption of the "water" ideogram in Egyptian writing. The Egyptian sign had the

acrophonic Acrophony (; Greek: ἄκρος ''akros'' uppermost + φωνή ''phone'' sound) is the naming of letters of an alphabetic writing system so that a letter's name begins with the letter itself. For example, Greek letter names are acrophonic: the name ...

value , from the Egyptian word for "water", ''nt''; the adoption as the Semitic letter for was presumably also on

grounds, from the Semitic word for "water", '' *mā(y)-''.

Use in writing systems

The letter represents the

bilabial nasal The voiced bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is m. The bilabial nasal occurs in ...

consonant sound in the orthography of Latin as well as in that of many modern

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

s, and also in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

. In English, the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...

(first edition) says that is sometimes a

vowel 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 (len ...

, in words like ''spasm'' and in the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

''-ism''. In modern terminology, this is described as a

syllabic consonant A syllabic consonant or vocalic consonant is a consonant that forms a syllable on its own, like the ''m'', ''n'' and ''l'' in some pronunciations of the English words ''rhythm'', ''button'' and ''bottle''. To represent it, the understroke diacrit ...

(IPA ). In Washo, lower-case represents a typical em sound, while upper-case represents a

voiceless In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies ...

em sound.

Other uses

* The

Roman numeral Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...

M represents the number

1000 1000 or thousand may refer to: * 1000 (number), a natural number * AD 1000, a leap year in the Julian calendar * 1000 BC, a year of the Before Christ era * 1000 metres, a middle-distance running event * 1000°, a German electronic dance music magazi ...

, though it was not used in Roman times. There is, however, scant evidence that the letter was later introduced in the early centuries A.D. by the Romans. *

Unit prefix A unit prefix is a specifier or mnemonic that is prepended to units of measurement to indicate multiples or fractions of the units. Units of various sizes are commonly formed by the use of such prefixes. The prefixes of the metric system, such as ...

M (mega), meaning one million times, and m (milli) meaning one-thousandth. * m is the standard abbreviation for

metre The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pre ...

(or meter) in the

International System of Units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. ...

(SI). However, m is also used as an abbreviation for

mile The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of distance; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 Engli ...

. * M is used as the unit abbreviation for

molarity Molar concentration (also called molarity, amount concentration or substance concentration) is a measure of the concentration of a chemical species, in particular of a solute in a solution, in terms of amount of substance per unit volume of solu ...

.M (James Bond) M is a codename held by a number of fictional characters in Ian Fleming's James Bond book and film series; the characters are the current or past Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, the agency known as MI6. Fleming based the character on ...

History

Use in writing systems

Other uses

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

Ligatures and abbreviations

Computing codes

Other representations

References

External links