p

Name	P
Letter	P p
Script	Latin script
Type	Alphabet
Typedesc	ic and logographic
Language	Latin language
Phonemes	() piː
Unicode	U+0050, U+0070
Alphanumber	16
Fam1	D21
Fam2	Proto-sinaitic P'it
Fam3	20px
Fam4	Phoenician Pe
Fam5	20px
Fam6	Ancient Greek Pi
Fam7	Early Greek Pi
Fam8	20px
Fam9	𐌐
Usageperiod	700 BCE to present
Children	Ᵽ ₱ ℘ ⅌ ℗ ♇ ꟼ ¶
Sisters	Π π Ⲡ П ף פ פּ ف ܦ ࠐ 𐎔 በ ጰ ፐ Պ պ प 𐍀 པ
Associates	p(x), ph
Direction	Left-to-right
Image
Imageclass	skin-invert-image

P, or p, is the sixteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is pee (pronounced 'piː), plural pees.

History

The Semitic Pê (mouth), as well as the Greek Π or π (Pi), and the Etruscan and Latin letters that developed from the former alphabet all symbolized /p/, a voiceless bilabial plosive.

Egyptian	Proto-Sinaitic	Proto-Canaanite pʿit	Phoenician Pe	Western Greek Pi	Etruscan P	Latin P
	25px	25px	25px	25px	25px	Latin P

Use in writing systems

(Pinyin)
English	, silent
French	, silent
German
Portuguese
Spanish
Turkish

Late Renaissance or early Baroque design of a P, from 1627

English

In English orthography, represents the sound .

A common digraph in English is , which represents the sound f, and can be used to transliterate phi in loanwords from Greek. In German, the digraph is common, representing a labial affricate /pf/.

Most English words beginning with are of foreign origin, primarily French, Latin and Greek; these languages preserve the Proto-Indo-European initial *p. Native English cognates of such words often start with , since English is a Germanic language and thus has undergone Grimm's law; a native English word with an initial /p/ would reflect Proto-Indo-European initial *b, which is so rare that its existence as a phoneme is disputed. However, native English words with non-initial are quite common; such words can come from either Kluge's law or the consonant cluster /sp/ (PIE: *p has been preserved after s).

P is the eighth least frequently used letter in the English language.

A bold italic letter is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "quiet". It stands for the Italian word piano.

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

The Latin letter P represents the same sound as the Greek letter Pi, but it looks like the Greek letter Rho.

𐤐 : Semitic letter Pe, from which the following symbols originally derive:

Π π : Greek letter Pi

𐌐 : Old Italic and Old Latin P, which derives from Greek Pi, and is the ancestor of modern Latin P. The Roman P had this form (𐌐) on coins and inscriptions until the reign of Claudius, .
: Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which derives from Greek Pi

: Coptic letter Pi
Պ պ: Armenian letter Pe

P with diacritics: Ṕ ṕ Ṗ ṗ Ᵽ ᵽ Ƥ ƥ ᵱ ᶈ
Turned P: P d, an additional letter of the Latin script not encoded in Unicode
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:

_p : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

₱ : Philippine peso sign
𝒫, 𝓅 : script letter P (uppercase and lowercase, respectively), used in mathematics. (In other contexts, a script typeface (or computer font) should be used.)
℘ Weierstrass p
℗ : sound recording copyright symbol
♇ : Pluto symbol, a monogram of the letters "PL", and also the initials of Percival Lowell, heralding his role in its discovery
ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for puella (girl)
Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations

Table of Contents

p

History

Use in writing systems

English

Other languages

Other systems

Other uses

Related characters

Ancestors, descendants and siblings

Derived ligatures, abbreviations, signs and symbols

Other representations

Other

See also

References

External links