S

History

Northwest Semitic šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative (as in 'ship'). It originated most likely as a pictogram of a tooth (שנא) and represented the phoneme via the acrophonic principle.

Ancient Greek did not have a "sh" phoneme, so the derived Greek letter Sigma (Σ) came to represent the voiceless alveolar sibilant . While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician šîn, its name sigma is taken from the letter Samekh, while the shape and position of samekh but name of šîn is continued in the xi. Within Greek, the name of sigma was influenced by its association with the Greek word σίζω (earlier grc), "to hiss". The original name of the letter "Sigma" may have been san, but due to the early history of the Greek epichoric alphabets, "san" came to be identified as a separate letter, Ϻ. Herodotus reported that "san" was the name given by the Dorians to the same letter called "Sigma" by the Ionians.

The Western Greek alphabet used in Cumae was adopted by the Etruscans and Latins in the 7th century BC, and over the following centuries, it developed into a range of Old Italic alphabets, including the Etruscan alphabet and the early Latin alphabet. In Etruscan, the value of Greek sigma (𐌔) was maintained, while san (𐌑) represented a separate phoneme, most likely "sh" (transliterated as ś). The early Latin alphabet adopted sigma, but not san, as Old Latin did not have a "sh" phoneme.

The shape of Latin S arises from Greek Σ by dropping one out of the four strokes of that letter. The (angular) S-shape composed of three strokes existed as a variant of the four-stroke letter Σ already in the epigraphy of Western Greek alphabets, and the three and four strokes variants existed alongside one another in the classical Etruscan alphabet. In other Italic alphabets (Venetic, Lepontic), the letter could be represented as a zig-zagging line of any number between three and six strokes. The Italic letter was also adopted into Elder Futhark, as Sowilō (), and appears with four to eight strokes in the earliest runic inscriptions, but is occasionally reduced to three strokes () from the later 5th century, and appears regularly with three strokes in Younger Futhark.

The digraph for English arose in Middle English (alongside ), replacing the Old English digraph. Similarly, Old High German was replaced by in Early Modern High German orthography.

Long s

Main article: Long s

The minuscule form ſ, called the long s, developed in the early medieval period, within the Visigothic and Carolingian hands, with predecessors in the half-uncial and cursive scripts of Late Antiquity. It remained standard in western writing throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types. It existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short" s, which were at the time only used at the end of words.

In most Western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. In Spain, the change was mainly accomplished between 1760 and 1766. In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793. Printers in the United States stopped using the long s between 1795 and 1810. In English orthography, the London printer John Bell (1745–1831) pioneered the change. His edition of Shakespeare, in 1785, was advertised with the claim that he "ventured to depart from the common mode by rejecting the long 'ſ' in favor of the round one, as being less liable to error....." The Times of London made the switch from the long to the short s with its issue of 10 September 1803. Encyclopædia Britannica's 5th edition, completed in 1817, was the last edition to use the long s.

In German orthography, long s was retained in Fraktur (Schwabacher) type as well as in standard cursive (Sütterlin) well into the 20th century, until official use of that typeface was abolished in 1941. Order of 3 January 1941 to all public offices, signed by Martin Bormann. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) was retained; however, it gave rise to the Eszett in contemporary German orthography.

Use in writing systems

English

In English, represents a voiceless alveolar sibilant . It also commonly represents a voiced alveolar sibilant , as in 'rose' and 'bands'. Due to yod-coalescence, it may also represent a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative , as in 'sugar', or a voiced palato-alveolar fricative , as in 'measure'.

Final is the usual mark for plural nouns. It is the regular ending of English third person present tense verbs.

In some words of French origin, is silent, as in 'isle' or 'debris'.

The letter is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common consonant after and . It is the most common letter for the first letter of a word in the English language.

German

In German, represents:

• A voiced alveolar sibilant before vowels (except after obstruents), as in 'sich'.
• A voiceless alveolar sibilant before consonants or when final, as in 'ist' and 'das'.
• A voiceless palato-alveolar fricative before at the beginning of a word or syllable, as in 'spät' and 'Stadt'.

When doubled (), it represents a voiceless alveolar sibilant , as in 'müssen'.

In the trigraph , it represents a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative , as in 'schon'.

Other languages

In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, represents the voiceless alveolar or voiceless dental sibilant .

In many Romance languages, it also represents the voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant , as in Portuguese mesa (table).

In Portuguese, it may represent the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative in most dialects when syllable-final, and in European Portuguese Islão (Islam) or, in many sociolects of Brazilian Portuguese, esdrúxulo (proparoxytone).

In some Andalusian dialects of Spanish, it merged with Peninsular Spanish and and is now pronounced .

In Hungarian, it represents .

In Turkmen, it represents .

In several Western Romance languages, like Spanish and French, the final is the usual mark of plural nouns.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant .

Other uses

Main article: S (disambiguation)

• Used in a chemical formula to represent sulfur. For example, is sulfur dioxide.
• Used in the preferred IUPAC name for a chemical to indicate a specific enantiomer. For example, "(S)-2-(4-Chloro-2-methylphenoxy)propanoic acid" is one of the enantiomers of mecoprop.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• ſ : Latin letter long s, an obsolete variant of s
• ẜ ẝ : Various forms of long s were used for medieval scribal abbreviations.
• ẞ ß : German Eszett or "sharp S", derived from a ligature of long s followed by either s or z
• S with diacritics: Ś ś Ṡ ṡ ẛ Ṩ ṩ Ṥ ṥ Ṣ ṣ S̩ s̩ Ꞩ ꞩ Ꟊ ꟊ Ꟍ ꟍ Ŝ ŝ Ṧ ṧ Š š Ş ş Ș ș S̈ s̈ ᶊ Ȿ ȿ ᵴ ᶳ
• ₛ : Subscript small s was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902.
• ˢ : Modifier letter small s is used for phonetic transcription.
• ꜱ : Small capital S was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to mark gemination.
• ꟱ : Modifier letter capital S is used as a phonetic and phonemic wildcard. It is also used as a tone sandhi letter in Western Highlands Chatino of Oaxaca.
• Ʂ ʂ : S with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s
• Ƨ ƨ : Latin letter reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration)
• 𝼩 : Latin small letter s with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
• IPA-specific symbols related to S:
• Para-IPA version of the IPA fricative ɕ: 𝼞 𐞺
• Ꞅ ꞅ : Insular S
• Ꟗ ꟗ : Used in Middle Scots
• Ꟙ ꟙ : Latin letter Sigmoid S was used in medieval palaeography

Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations

• $ : Dollar sign
• ₷ : Spesmilo
• § : Section sign
• ℠ : Service mark symbol
• ∫ : Integral symbol, short for summation (derived from long s)

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤔 : Semitic letter Shin, from which the following symbols originally derive:
  • archaic Greek Sigma could be written with different numbers of angles and strokes. Besides the classical form with four strokes (), a three-stroke form resembling an angular Latin S () was commonly found, and was particularly characteristic of some mainland Greek varieties, including the Attic and several "red" alphabets.
    • Σ: classical Greek letter Sigma
      • Ϲ ϲ: Greek lunate sigma
        • : Coptic letter sima
        • С с : Cyrillic letter Es, derived from a form of sigma
    • 𐌔 : Old Italic letter S, includes the variants also found in the archaic Greek letter
      • S: Latin letter S
      • : Runic letter sowilo, which is derived from Old Italic S
    • : Gothic letter sigil
• Ս : Armenian letter Se

Other representations

Computing

Other representations

Notes

References

References

1. "S", ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]],'' 2nd edition (1989); ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1993); "ess," op. cit.
2. "corresponds etymologically (in part, at least) to original Semitic ''ṯ'' (th), which was pronounced ''s'' in South Canaanite" Albright, W. F., "The Early Alphabetic Inscriptions from Sinai and their Decipherment," Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 110 (1948), p. 15. The interpretation as "tooth" is now prevalent, but not entirely certain. The ''Encyclopaedia Judaica'' of 1972 reported that the letter represented a "composite bow".
3. Woodard, Roger D. (2006). "Alphabet". In Wilson, Nigel Guy. Encyclopedia of ancient Greece. London: Routldedge. p. 38.
4. "{{lang. grc. ...τὠυτὸ γράμμα, τὸ Δωριέες μὲν σὰν καλέουσι ,Ἴωνες δὲ σίγμα" ('...the same letter, which the Dorians call "San", but the Ionians "Sigma"...'; Herodotus, ''[[Histories (Herodotus). Histories]]'' 1.139); cf. Nick Nicholas, [http://www.tlg.uci.edu/~opoudjis/unicode/nonattic.html ''Non-Attic letters''] {{webarchive. link. (2012-06-28 .)
5. Stanley Morison, ''A Memoir of John Bell, 1745–1831'' (1930, Cambridge Univ. Press) page 105; Daniel Berkeley Updike, ''Printing Types, Their History, Forms, and Use – a study in survivals'' (2nd. ed, 1951, [[Harvard University Press]]) page 293.
6. "English Letter Frequency".
7. (July 2025). "Letter Frequencies in the English Language".
8. (June 25, 2012). "Which English Letter Has Maximum Words".
9. (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS".
10. (2019-05-26). "L2/19-179: Proposal for the addition of four Latin characters for Gaulish".
11. Miller, Kirk. (2022-07-09). "L2/22-113R: Unicode request for two BMP Latin characters".
12. Constable, Peter. (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS".
13. Constable, Peter. (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS".
14. (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet".
15. (2024-03-19). "L2/24-081: Unicode request for modifier capital S".
16. (2017-01-16). "L2/17-013: Proposal to encode three uppercase Latin letters used in early Pinyin".
17. (2021-07-16). "L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam".
18. Miller, Kirk. (2021-01-11). "L2/21-041: Unicode request for additional para-IPA letters".
19. Everson, Michael. (2019-04-25). "L2/19-180R: Proposal to add two characters for Middle Scots to the UCS".
20. Everson, Michael. (2020-10-01). "L2/20-269: Proposal to add two SIGMOID S characters for mediaeval palaeography".