P

This article is about the letter of the Latin alphabet. For other uses, see P (disambiguation).

For technical reasons, ":P" redirects here. For the keyboard symbol, see List of emoticons.

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 /ˈpiː/), plural pees.^[1]

P
P p
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Sound values	[p] [pʰ] [(p)f] [pʼ] [b] /piː/
In Unicode	U+0050, U+0070
Alphabetical position	16
History
Development	𐌐 P p
Time period	~−700 to present
Descendants	• Ᵽ  • ₱  • ℘  • ⅌  • ℗  • ♇  • ꟼ  • ¶
Sisters	Π π Ⲡ П ף פ פּ ف ܦ ࠐ 𐎔 በ ጰ ፐ Պ պ प 𐍀 པ
Other
Associated graphs	p(x), ph
Writing direction	Left-to-right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨p⟩ by language

Orthography	Phonemes
Standard Chinese (Pinyin)	/pʰ/
English	/p/, silent
French	/p/, silent
German	/p/
Portuguese	/p/
Spanish	/p/
Turkish	/p/

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

English

In English orthography, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.

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

Most English words beginning with ⟨p⟩ 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 ⟨f⟩, 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 ⟨p⟩ 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.

Other languages

In most European languages, ⟨p⟩ represents the sound /p/.

Other systems

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨p⟩ is used to represent the voiceless bilabial plosive.

Other uses

Main article: P (disambiguation)

• A bold italic letter p is used in musical notation as a dynamic indicator for "quiet". It stands for the Italian word piano.^[2][3]

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, c. 50 AD.
    • 𐍀 : Gothic letter pertra/pairþa, which derives from Greek Pi
    • П п : Cyrillic letter Pe, which derives from Greek Pi
  • Ⲡ ⲡ : Coptic letter Pi
  • Պ պ: Armenian letter Pe
• P with diacritics: Ṕ ṕ Ṗ ṗ Ᵽ ᵽ Ƥ ƥ ᵱ^[4] ᶈ^[5]
• Turned P
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:^[6]
  • U+1D18 ᴘ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL P
  • U+1D3E ᴾ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL P
  • U+1D56 ᵖ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL P
• _p : Subscript small p was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902^[7]

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
• ꟼ : Reversed P was used in ancient Roman texts to stand for puella (girl)^[8]
• Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations^[9]

Other representations

Computing

Character information

Preview	P		p		Ｐ		ｐ
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P		LATIN SMALL LETTER P		FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER P		FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER P
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	80	U+0050	112	U+0070	65328	U+FF30	65360	U+FF50
UTF-8	80	50	112	70	239 188 176	EF BC B0	239 189 144	EF BD 90
Numeric character reference	P	P	p	p	Ｐ	Ｐ	ｐ	ｐ
EBCDIC family	215	D7	151	97
ASCII[lower-alpha 1]	80	50	112	70

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

Other

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Papa	▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ⓘ

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Unified English Braille

See also

• Mind your Ps and Qs
• Pence or "penny", the English slang for which is p (e.g. "20p" = 20 pence)

References

1. "P", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged (1993); "pee," op. cit.
2. Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.). Cambridge, MA, US: Harvard University Press Reference Library.
3. "Piano". Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary. Archived from the original on 22 October 2014. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
4. Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
5. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
6. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-02-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
7. Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
8. Perry, David J. (2006-08-01). "L2/06-269: Proposal to Add Additional Ancient Roman Characters to UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2019-06-14. Retrieved 2018-03-24.
9. Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19. Retrieved 2018-03-24.

External links

• Media related to P at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of P at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of p at Wiktionary