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Not to be confused with theCyrillic letter Ҽ.
This article is about the letter. For Euler's number, seee (mathematical constant).For other uses of the symboleorE,seeE (disambiguation).
Fortechnical reasons,"E#" redirects here. For E sharp, seeE♯.

E
E e
Usage
Writing systemLatin script
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originLatin language
Sound values
InUnicodeU+0045, U+0065
Alphabetical position5
History
Development
Time periodc. 700 BC– present
Descendants
Sisters
Other
Associated graphsee,e(x),e(x)(y)
Writing directionLeft-to-right
This article containsphonetic transcriptionsin theInternational Phonetic Alphabet(IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA.For the distinction between[ ],/ /and ⟨⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
E
ISO basic
Latin Alpha bet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz

E,ore,is the fifthletterand the secondvowel letterof theLatin Alpha bet,used in themodern English Alpha bet,the Alpha bets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English ise(pronounced/ˈiː/); plurales,EsorE's.[1]

It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, includingCzech,Danish,Dutch,English,French,German,Hungarian,Latin,Latvian,Norwegian,Spanish,andSwedish.[2][3][4][5][6]

Name

In English, the name of the letter is the "long E" sound, pronounced/ˈiː/.In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation inopen syllables.

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

History

Egyptian hieroglyph
qʼ 		Proto-Sinaitic Proto-Canaanite hillul Phoenician
He 		Western Greek
Epsilon 		Etruscan
E 		Latin
E
A28
 Latin E

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, theGreekletterepsilon,'Ε'. This in turn comes from theSemiticletterhê,which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul,'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similarEgyptian hieroglyphthat indicated a different pronunciation.

In Semitic, the letter represented/h/(and/e/in foreign words); in Greek,hêbecame the letterepsilon,used to represent/e/.The various forms of theOld Italic scriptand theLatin Alpha betfollowed this usage.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of⟨e⟩by language
Orthography Phonemes
Standard Chinese(Pinyin) /ə/
English /ɛ/,/iː/,/ə/,/ɜː/,/ɪə/
French /ə/,/ɛ/,/e/
German /ɛ/,/eː/,/e/
Portuguese /e/,/ɛ/,/i/,/ɨ/,/j/,/ɐ/,/ɐi/
Spanish /e/
Turkish /e/

English

AlthoughMiddle Englishspelling used⟨e⟩to represent long and short/e/,theGreat Vowel Shiftchanged long/eː/(as inmeorbee) to/iː/while short/ɛ/(as inmetorbed) remained amid vowel.In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as/ɪ/or/ə/.In other cases, the letter issilent,generally at the end of words likequeue.

Other languages

In the orthography of many languages, it represents either[e],[e̞],[ɛ],or some variation (such as anasalizedversion) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as:⟨eêéèëēĕěẽėẹęẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich,⟨e⟩represents amid-central vowel/ə/.Digraphswith⟨e⟩are common to indicate eitherdiphthongsormonophthongs,such as⟨ea⟩or⟨ee⟩for/iː/or/eɪ/in English,⟨ei⟩for/aɪ/inGerman,and⟨eu⟩for/ø/inFrenchor/ɔɪ/in German.

Other systems

TheInternational Phonetic Alphabetuses ⟨e⟩ for theclose-mid front unrounded vowelor themid front unrounded vowel.

Frequency

E is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English language Alpha bet and several otherEuropean languages,[7]which has implications in bothcryptographyanddata compression.This makes it a harder letter to use when writinglipograms.

Other uses

Main article:E (disambiguation)
Ascientific calculatordisplay showing theAvogadro constant(6.02214076×1023reciprocalmoles) inE notation

Ancestors and siblings in other Alpha bets

  • 𐤄:SemiticletterHe (letter),from which the following symbols originally derive:
    • Ε ε:GreekletterEpsilon,from which the following symbols originally derive:
      • Е е:CyrillicletterYe
      • Є є:Ukrainian Ye
      • Э э: Cyrillic letterE
      • Ⲉ ⲉ:Copticletter Ei
      • 𐌄:Old ItalicE, which is the ancestor of modern Latin E
        • ᛖ:RunicletterEhwaz,which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic E
      • 𐌴:Gothicletter eyz

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

Character information
Preview E e Ｅ ｅ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E LATIN SMALL LETTER E FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER E
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 69 U+0045 101 U+0065 65317 U+FF25 65349 U+FF45
UTF-8 69 45 101 65 239 188 165 EF BC A5 239 189 133 EF BD 85
Numeric character reference E E e e Ｅ Ｅ ｅ ｅ
EBCDICfamily 197 C5 133 85
ASCII[a] 69 45 101 65

Other

InBritish 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.

See also

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

Notes

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

References

  1. ^"E".Oxford Dictionary of English(3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2010.ISBN9780199571123.noun (plural Es or E's)
  2. ^Kelk, Brian."Letter frequencies".Archivedfrom the original on May 9, 2008.RetrievedFebruary 2,2022.
  3. ^Lewand, Robert."Relative Frequencies of Letters in General English Plain text".Cryptographical Mathematics.Central College.Archived fromthe originalon July 8, 2008.RetrievedJune 25,2008.
  4. ^"Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in Spanish".Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived fromthe originalon May 11, 2008.RetrievedJune 25,2008.
  5. ^"Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in French".Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived fromthe originalon March 12, 2008.RetrievedJune 25,2008.
  6. ^"Frequency of Occurrence of Letters in German".Santa Cruz Public Libraries. Archived fromthe originalon June 28, 2012.RetrievedJune 25,2008.
  7. ^Grigas, Gintautas; Juškevičienė, Anita (March 26, 2018)."Letter Frequency Analysis of Languages Using Latin Alphabet".International Linguistics Research.1(1): 18.doi:10.30560/ilr.v1n1p18.ISSN2576-2982.
  8. ^abcdConstable, Peter (April 19, 2004)."L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on October 11, 2017.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  9. ^Lemonen, Therese; Ruppel, Klaas; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Sandström, Caroline (January 26, 2006)."L2/06-036: Proposal to encode characters for Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål in the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on July 6, 2017.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  10. ^abMiller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (November 8, 2020)."L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on July 30, 2021.
  11. ^Everson, Michael;et al. (March 20, 2002)."L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on February 19, 2018.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  12. ^Ruppel, Klaas; Rueter, Jack; Kolehmainen, Erkki I. (April 7, 2006)."L2/06-215: Proposal for Encoding 3 Additional Characters of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on July 6, 2017.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  13. ^Anderson, Deborah; Everson, Michael (June 7, 2004)."L2/04-191: Proposal to encode six Indo-Europeanist phonetic characters in the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on October 11, 2017.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  14. ^Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (June 2, 2011)."L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode" Teuthonista "phonetic characters in the UCS"(PDF).Archived(PDF)from the original on October 11, 2017.RetrievedMarch 24,2018.
  • Media related toEat Wikimedia Commons
  • The dictionary definition ofEat Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition ofeat Wiktionary
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