13th letter of the Latin alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
M, or m, is the thirteenth 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 em (pronounced /ˈɛm/), plural ems.[1]
The Roman numeral M represents the number 1000, 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.[3]
Unit prefix M (mega), meaning one million times, and m (milli) meaning one-thousandth.[4][5]
M is used as the unit abbreviation for molarity.[4]
With money amounts, m or M is ambiguous. In the finance industry[6], m or M means 1,000. In this context, five million dollars is written $5mm or $5MM. Outside of finance, some people use M like the metric system "mega-" to mean one million and write $5M.[4][5]
M often represents male or masculine, especially in conjunction with F for female or feminine.[4][5]
In typography, an em dash is a punctuation symbol whose width is similar to that of a capital letter M.
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
ꟽ: Inverted M was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for mulier (woman)[12]
ꟿ: Archaic M was used in ancient Roman texts to abbreviate the personal name 'Manius' (A regular capital M was used for the more common personal name 'Marcus')[12]
"M" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "em," op. cit.
See F. Simons, "Proto-Sinaitic — Progenitor of the Alphabet" Rosetta 9 (2011):
Figure Two: "Representative selection of proto-Sinaitic characters with comparison to Egyptian hieroglyphs", (p. 38)
Figure Three: "Chart of all early proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to proto-Sinaitic signs" (p. 39),
Figure Four: "Representative selection of later proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to early proto-Canaanite and proto-Sinaitic signs" (p. 40). See also: Goldwasser (2010), following Albright (1966), "Schematic Table of Proto-Sinaitic Characters" (fig. 1Archived 2016-07-03 at the Wayback Machine).