K
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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For other uses, see K (disambiguation).
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| Egyptian hieroglyph D | Proto-Semitic K | Phoenician K | Etruscan K | Greek Kappa | ||
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The letter K is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet. It comes from the Greek Κ or κ (Kappa) developed from the Semitic Kap, symbol for an open hand. This in turn was likely adapted by Semites who had lived in Egypt, from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing D for the Egyptian word for hand, d-r-t. The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound.
This Semitic value of /k/ for this letter was maintained in most classic as well as modern languages, although Latin abandoned the use of K almost completely, preferring C. When Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was converted to C. Some words from other alphabets were also transliterated into C. Therefore, the Romance languages have K only in words from still other language groups. The Celtic languages also chose C over K, and this influence carried over into Old English. Today, English is the only Germanic language that uses hard C in addition to K.
Some English linguists prefer to reverse the Latin transliteration process for proper names in Greek, spelling Ceres as "Keres", for example. And the writing down of languages that don't have their own alphabet with the Latin one has resulted in a standardization of the letter K for this sound, as in Kwakiutl.
Its name in English is kay /keɪ/. In English, it is generally pronounced with the /k/ sound, but is silent when followed by an n, in words like knowledge. Sometimes, in advertising it is used instead of C. [1]
In the International phonetic alphabet, [k] is the symbol for the voiceless velar plosive.
Several other alphabets also use characters with sharp angles to indicate the sound /k/ or syllables that start with a /k/, for example: Japanese く, Arabic ﮐ, Hebrew כ (in some fonts), Korean 기. This kind of phonetic-visual association was studied by Wolfgang Köhler. However, there are also many examples of rounded letters for /k/, like ค in Thai or Գ in Armenian.
Codes for computing
| NATO phonetic | Morse code | ||
| Kilo | |||
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| Signal flag | Semaphore | ASL Manual | Braille |
In Unicode the capital K is codepoint U+004B and the lowercase k is U+006B.
The ASCII code for capital K is 75 and for lowercase k is 107; or in binary 01001011 and 01101011, correspondingly.
The EBCDIC code for capital K is 210, and for lowercase k, 146.
The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "K" and "k" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings for K
- In accounting and investment banking, K = 1000 (similar to the use in the SI system below).
- In astronomy,
- K stands for an orangish class of stars in the Morgan-Keenan system.
- K is a provisional designation prefix for any comet, asteroid, or minor planet discovered between May 16 and 31 of a year.
- in infrared astronomy, the K-band is the region around 2.2 µm wavelength.
- In baseball, K is the abbreviation for a swinging strikeout. (A backwards K is the symbol for a "looking" strikeout in baseball scorekeeping.) The letter K is also commonly used, particularly in boxscores and other contexts that don't distinguish between swinging and looking strikeouts, to indicate a strikeout of any kind.
- In biochemistry, K is the symbol for the amino acid lysine.
- In Boolean algebra, a K-map is an abbreviation for a Karnaugh map.
- In chemistry,
- K is the symbol for potassium (from its Latin name kalium).
- K is the symbol for the equilibrium constant.
- k is the symbol for the reaction rate constant.
- In chess, K is a notation symbol for the king piece.
- In the CMYK color model, K stands for the color black.
- In commerce, a circled K, Ⓚ, on a food product indicates kosher certification.
- In combinatory logic of computer science, K is the name of a fundamental combinator, the constant function.
- In computing,
- K is a binary prefix meaning 210 = 1,024 (compare with use as a prefix in the SI system below).
- K is an obsolete abbreviation for kilobyte (now kB or KB)
- K also refers to the K programming language.
- In Discordianism, a circled K, Ⓚ, indicates the material is Kopyleft
- In economics, K is the abbreviation for income.
- In education, K is the abbreviation for kindergarten, as in K-12.
- In engineering, K is an abbreviation denoting a kip (1k = 1000 pound force).
- In English slang, K is an abbreviation for ketamine.
- In film, K is a character played by Tommy Lee Jones in the films Men in Black and Men in Black 2
- In finance, K is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for the Kellogg Company.
- In Hong Kong slang, K is the abbreviation for karaoke.
- In gold, K is the abbreviation for karat (in the American spelling).
- In international license plate codes, K stands for Cambodia.
- In internet slang, K stands for okay.
- In law, K is a common abbreviation for contract.
- In library science, K is the Library of Congress classification designation for books about law.
- In logic, K is the simplest system of modal logic (K stands for "Kripke").
- In mathematics, Kn denotes the complete graph on n vertices.
- In music, K. numbers identify the compositions of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the catalog compiled by Ludwig von Köchel (sometimes abbreviated K.V., standing for Köchel-Verzeichnis). K. numbers are also used to identify the compositions of Domenico Scarlatti in the catalog compiled by Ralph Kirkpatrick. K is also an album by Kula Shaker and an independent record company based in Olympia, Washington, co-founded by Calvin Johnson.
- In nutrition, K is a vitamin which is essential in blood coagulation (or, as it is known in German, koagulation, thus the name).
- In physics,
- k is the symbol for the Boltzmann constant.
- k is the symbol for the spring constant in Hooke's law.
- k is In symbol for thermal conductivity.
- k is the symbol for Wavenumber.
- In a deck of playing cards, the letter K is used to mark each of the kings.
- In politics, K refers to the Keskustapuolue (Centre Party of Finland), or to the politics and followers of President of Argentina Néstor Kirchner.
- K can be short for the record label K Records.
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- In Canada, K stands for Eastern Ontario.
- In radio,
- the K band ranges from 12 to 93 GHz
- the NATO K band ranges from 20 to 40 GHz
- In radio communication
- K is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United States. K is generally used as the first letter of callsigns allocated to broadcast television or radio stations west of the Mississippi river.
- As a procedural signal, K means "go ahead" or "over".
- In semiconductors, electronics, and physics, it is the symbol for the dielectric constant. See Low-K.
- In the SI system (the metric system),
- k is an SI prefix denoting 103 = 1,000 (one thousand). Consequently, the letter K can be used in spoken conversation to mean "thousand". Compare with use as a binary prefix in computing above. In the case of money, the notation $12k is used for $12,000, not k$12 or 12 k$.
- K is the symbol for the SI base unit for temperature, the kelvin.
- In Slang, K referes to the drug Ketamine
- In World War II, K was the designation for Japanese Navy trainer aircraft.
- In the work of Franz Kafka, the protagonist of The Trial is called Joseph K., and the protagonist of The Castle is called simply K.
- K is usually the beginning letter in Applications designed for KDE, usually due to a deliberate misspelling (e.g., Konqueror)
- crown
- In Taiwan, "K書" (literally k the book) means read the book.
- A character in the manga and anime, Gravitation.
See also
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