What is E?

E
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

E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (IPA: /iː/), plural es or ees (also written E's, Es, e's, etc.).^[1] The letter E is the most commonly used letter in the English language.^[2]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph q’	Proto-Semitic H	Phoenician H	Etruscan E	Greek Epsilon	Roman E
<hiero>A28</hiero>

E is derived from the Greek letter epsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. In etymology, the Semitic hê probably first represented a praying or calling human figure (hillul jubilation), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that was pronounced and used quite differently. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words), in Greek hê became Εψιλον (Epsilon) with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. Arising from the Great Vowel Shift, English usage is rather different, namely /iː/ (derived from /eː/ in "me" or "bee") whereas other words like "bed" are closer to Latin and other languages in usage.

Usage

Like other Latin vowels, E came in a long and a short variety. Originally, the only difference was in length but later on, short e represented /ɛ/. In other languages that use the letter E or e, it represents various other phonetic values, sometimes with accents to indicate contrasts (e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ).

Digraphs starting with E are common in many languages to indicate diphthongs and monophthongs, such as EA or EE for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, EI for /aɪ// in German, or EU for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

At the end of a word, E is very often silent in English (silent E), where old noun inflections have been dropped, although even when silent at the end of a word it often causes vowels in the word to be pronounced as diphthongs, conventionally called long vowels (compare as a noun rat and as a verb rate).

Mathematical constant

For the number that is base of the natural logarithm (≈ 2.71828), see e (mathematical constant).

The letter 'E' is the most common letter in the English language and many other related languages, which have some implications in cryptography. This also makes it a difficult and popular letter to use when writing lipograms.

Scientific Use

• The upper case letter E is often used to represent energy, most famously in the formula "E=mc²".
• The lower case letter e is used to represent the electron or the elementary charge.

Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital E is codepoint U+0045 and the lowercase e is U+0065.

The ASCII code for capital E is 69 and for lowercase e is 101; or in binary 01000101 and 01100101, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital E is 197 and for lowercase e is 133.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "E" and "e" for upper and lower case respectively.

Sources

See also

Similar Latin letters:

• Ɛɛ : Latin epsilon

Similar non-Latin letters:

• Εε : Greek epsilon
• Ее : Cyrillic Ye/E
• Ёё : Cyrillic Yo
• Єє : Ukrainian Ye
• Ээ : Cyrillic backwards E

Similar phonetic symbols:

• e : Close-mid front unrounded vowel
• ɛ : Open-mid front unrounded vowel

Special symbols similar to the letter E:

• ℮ : Estimated sign (used on prepackaged goods for sale within the European Union).
• € : Euro sign

The 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
Letter E with diacritics ĔĕẾếỀềỄễỂểĚěẼẽĖėȨȩḜḝĘęĒēḖḗḔḕẺẻȄȅȆȇẸẹỆệḘḙḚḛɆɇᶒ? Two-letter combinations Ea Eb Ec Ed Ee Ef Eg Eh Ei Ej Ek El Em En Eo Ep Eq Er Es Et Eu Ev Ew Ex Ey Ez EA EB EC ED EE EF EG EH EI EJ EK EL EM EN EO EP EQ ER ES ET EU EV EW EX EY EZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations                 E0 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 E8 E9                 0E 1E 2E 3E 4E 5E 6E 7E 8E 9E history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters