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For the mathematical constant, see e (mathematical constant).

For other uses, see E (disambiguation).

Latin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

The letter E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is pronounced /iː/.

Contents 1 History 2 Usage 3 Codes for computing 4 Meanings of E 5 See also

History

Egyptian hieroglyph q’	Proto-Semitic H	Phoenician H	Etruscan E	Greek Epsilon

E is derived from the Greek letter epsilon which is much the same in appearance (Ε, ε) and function. The Semitic hê probably first represented a praying or calling human figure (hillul jubilation), and was probably based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that was pronounced and used quite differently. In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words), in Greek hê became Εψιλον (Epsilon) with the value /e/. Etruscans and Romans followed this usage. Arising from the Great Vowel Shift, English usage is rather different, namely /iː/ (derived from /eː/ in "me" or "bee", whereas other words like "bed" are closer to Latin and other languages in usage.

Usage

Like other Latin vowels, E came in a long and a short variety. Originally, the only difference was in length but later on, short e represented /ɛ/. In other languages that use the letter, it represents various other phonetic values, sometimes with accents to indicate contrasts (ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ). Digraphs starting with E are common in many languages to indicate diphthongs monophthongs, such as EA or EE for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, EI for /aɪ// in German, or EU for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

At the end of a word, E is very often silent in English (silent E), where old noun inflections have been dropped, although even when silent at the end of a word it often causes vowels in the word to be pronounced as long (compare rat and rate).

This is the most common letter in English and many related languages, which has some implications in cryptography. This also makes it a difficult and popular letter to use when writing lipograms.

Codes for computing

In Unicode the capital E is codepoint U+0045 and the lowercase e is U+0065.

The ASCII code for capital E is 69 and for lowercase e is 101; or in binary 01000101 and 01100101, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital E is 197 and for lowercase e is 133.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "E" and "e" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings of E

• In astronomy,
  • E stands for a March 1 through 15 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/1973 E1, Comet Kohoutek) or asteroid (e.g. (4178) 1988 EO₁).
  • E would stand for Earth, in the provisional designation of any ring or natural satellite discovered around it.
• In the atmosphere of Earth, the E layer is part of the ionosphere.
• In biochemistry, E is the symbol for glutamic acid and also often an abbreviation for enzyme.
• In computing,
  • The letter e is often used as a prefix (with or without a subsequent hyphen) for other words to imply "electronic", such as e-mail or e-commerce.
  • E is also a programming language available for the Amiga. It's related to C and Pascal. See Amiga E.
  • The E programming language is an object-oriented language for secure distributed computing.
• In computational complexity theory, the complexity class E is a variant of the class EXPTIME of problems solvable in exponential time.
• In currency, E is sometimes used as symbol for the euro when the symbol € is not available.
• In education, E is a very low grade, except in some grading systems such as the one used in the USA which goes from D to F, omitting E.
• In electrochemistry, E is a symbol for electrode potential, and E° is a symbol for standard electrode potential.
• In English slang, E is a term for Ecstasy or MDMA, a synthetic drug which is often used recreationally.
• In film, E is a Canadian film from 1982; see E (film).
• In finance, E is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for ENI Spa
• In gender-neutral pronouns, e is the Spivak pronoun meaning he or she.
• In geography and weather forecasting, E stands for east, one of the four cardinal directions.
• In the International Phonetic Alphabet, /e/ refers to the close-mid front unrounded vowel. Its turned counterpart, /ə/, stands for the mid central vowel or schwa.
• In Japanese, E is a romanization of the kana え and エ.
• In legal metrology, the "estimated" sign (the symbol ℮) following a measurement of quantity (e.g., 750 ml ℮) is used to indicate that the measurement of weight or volume is done according to preset rules with specific allowable variances.
• In international licence plate codes, E stands for Spain (España).
• In mathematics,
  • e is Euler's number, a transcendental number (approximately equal to 2.718281828459045235360287471352) which is used as the base for natural logarithms.
  • One version of a representation of e is
  • Another representation of e is the limit as x approaches infinity of .
  • A small-caps e is also used to signify y×10^x; i.e. 7e8 is 7×10⁸ or 700,000,000.
  • E is often used as a digit meaning fourteen in hexadecimal and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 15 or greater.
• In the SI system, E, exa, is the SI prefix meaning 10¹⁸.
• In music, E is a note (pitch).
• In nutrition, E is a vitamin.
• In physics, E is,
  • The symbol for energy, as in E = mc² (see E=mc²).
  • The symbol for electric field.
  • In particle physics, e (or e^-) is the symbol for the electron.
  • Also in semiconductor physics, e may represent elementary charge.
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, E stands for New Brunswick.
  • In the United Kingdom, E stands for East London.
• In probability and statistics, a capital E or blackboard bold denotes expected value.
• In radio,
  • the NATO E band ranges from 2 to 3 GHz.
• In set theory, denotes set membership.
• In sports, E# refers to a team's elimination number.
• In structural engineering, E stands for the modulus of elasticity.
• In symbolic logic, ∃ (a backwards E) is the symbol for "there exists...", called the existential quantifier. Example: .
• In weights and measures, e (a lowercase E) is the EEC Mark indicating that a package has been made up in accordance with the average system.
• In video games, E is the ESRB rating symbol for Everyone.
• 鄂, or È is an abbreviation for the Hubei province of the People's Republic of China.
• "E" is the pseudonym of Mark Oliver Everett, lead singer of The Eels.
• E! (Entertainment Television) is an American cable television and direct broadcast satellite network.
• In Romania, E is a symbol of parthenogenesis.
• In X Window System, E is short for Enlightenment (X window manager).
• In Polish locomotives designation E stands for electric locomotive.
• In California, E in a diamond or octagon on a licence plate represents a government owned vehicle.

See also

Similar non-Latin letters:

• Ε : Epsilon
• Е : Ye (Cyrillic)
• Є : Ukrainian Ye
• Э : E (Cyrillic)

Two-letter combinations Ea Eb Ec Ed Ee Ef Eg Eh Ei Ej Ek El Em En Eo Ep Eq Er Es Et Eu Ev Ew Ex Ey Ez EA EB EC ED EE EF EG EH EI EJ EK EL EM EN EO EP EQ ER ES ET EU EV EW EX EY EZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations E0 E1 E2 E3 E4 E5 E6 E7 E8 E9 0E 1E 2E 3E 4E 5E 6E 7E 8E 9E