Dictionary of Meaning
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A
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The letter
A is the first letter in the
Latin alphabet. Its name in
English is
a , plural
aes, a's, or
as.
History
The letter A probably started as a
pictogram of an
ox head in
Egyptian hieroglyphs or the
Proto-semitic alphabet.
{| align="center" cellspacing="10"
|- align="center"
|
Egyptian hieroglyph
ox head
|
Proto-semitic
ox head
|
Phoenician
aleph
|
Greek
alpha
|
Etruscan A
|
Roman A
|}
By 1600 BC, the
Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the
Hebrew Aleph (letter). The name is also similar to the Arabic
Aleph (letter). The name is also similar to the Arabic
alif.
When the
Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they had no use for the
glottal stop that the letter had denoted in Phoenician and other
Semitic languages, so they used the sign for the vowel , and changed its name to
alpha (letter). In the earliest Greek inscriptions, dating to the
alpha (letter). In the earliest Greek inscriptions, dating to the
8th century BC, the letter rests upon its side, but in the
Greek alphabet of later times it generally resembles the modern capital letter, although many local varieties can be distinguished by the shortening of one leg, or by the angle at which the cross line is set.
The
Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to what was
Italy and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the
Old Italic alphabet to write
Old Italic alphabet to write
Latin,_and the resulting letter was preserved in the modern
Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including
English.
The letter has two
minuscule (lower-case) forms. The form used in most current handwriting consists of a circle and vertical stroke. Most printed material uses a form consisting of a small loop with an arc over it. Both derive from the majuscule (capital) form. In Greek handwriting, it was common to join the left leg and horizontal stroke into a single loop, as demonstrated by the Uncial version below. Many fonts then made the right leg vertical. In some of these, the
serif that began the right leg stroke developed into an arc, resulting in the printed form, while in others it was dropped, resulting in the modern handwritten form.
{| align="center" cellspacing="10"
|- align="center"
| A
| A
|
|- align="center"
|
Modern Roman A
|
Modern Italic A
|
Modern Script A
|}
Usage
In
English, the letter A by itself usually denotes the
lax open front unrounded vowel ( (though the pronunciation varies with the dialect) as in
ace, due to effects of the
Great vowel shift.
In most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter A denotes either an
open back unrounded vowel ().
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet, variants of the letter A denote various
vowels. In
X-SAMPA, capital A denotes the
open back unrounded vowel and lowercase a denotes the
open front unrounded vowel.
A also is the English
indefinite article, extended to
an before a vowel. See
A, an.
Codes for computing
{{Letter
|NATO=Alpha
|Morse=·–
|B1=â—?
|B2=â—‹
|B3=â—‹
|B4=â—‹
|B5=â—‹
|B6=â—‹
}}
In
Unicode the
capital A is codepoint U+0041 and the
lowercase a is U+0061.
In
Hex, A is the character used to represent decimal 10, or in
Binary numeral system, 01010
The
ASCII code for capital A is 65 and for lowercase a is 97; or in
Binary numeral system 01000001 and 01100001, correspondingly.
The
EBCDIC code for capital A is 193 and for lowercase a is 129.
The
numeric character references in
HTML and
XML are "
&" and "
a" for upper and lower case respectively.
Meanings for A
- In American Major League Baseball, the Oakland Athletics are often simply referred to as the "A's."
- In astronomy,
A stands for a January 1 through 15 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/1760 A1, the Great Comet of 1760) or asteroid (e.g. )
- In biochemistry, A is the symbol for alanine and adenosine.
- Brassiere cup size A
- In calendars, A is often an abbreviation for the months April and August.
- In computing,
In the Mac OS, Command-A (for All), and in Windows, Ctrl-A, and selects all the text in the document, or all the pixels of an image.
A is a security division ("Verified Protection") in the TCSEC.
- In education, a Grade (education) of A' typically represents the highest score that students can achieve. This is sometimes coupled with a Grade (education) of A' typically represents the highest score that students can achieve. This is sometimes coupled with a plus/minus sign, as in 'A+' or 'A-', or a number, as in 'A1'. It is occasionally a grade one level below 'A- (pronounced "A Star").
- In electronics,
A refers to the Anode, or filament, component of a vacuum tube.
- In English, the word a is an indefinite article (grammar), see article (grammar), see A, an
- In Esperanto, -a is the adjectival/attributive ending; A is commonly an abbreviation meaning English (language).
- In fiction, the letter worn by Hester Prynne marking her as an adultress in the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel The Scarlet Letter was an A.
- In film, A is an Italian film made in 1969; see A (film).
- In finance, A is the U.S. ticker symbol for Agilent Technologies.
- In games, the letter A is used to mark each of the Aces in a deck of playing cards.
- In geology it stands for annum (Latin for "year") and is usually used with Mega (Ma) and Giga (Ga) to indicate very long periods of time; see annum.
- In Greek, a- is a prefix (linguistics) (alpha privativum) meaning "not" or "devoid of," used in many borrowed words in prefix (linguistics) (alpha privativum) meaning "not" or "devoid of," used in many borrowed words in English, German and Romance languages (e.g. amoral, asexual, arhythmic).
- In India A is movie rating, given to those intended to be seen only by adults.
- In List of international license plate codes|international licence plate codes, A stands for Austria.
- In international paper sizes, A is a series of sizes with an aspect ratio of roughly 70% width to height, with A4 being an example popular size.
- In logic,
- *the letter A is used as a symbol for the universal affirmative proposition in the general form "all x is y." The letters I, E, and O are used respectively for the particular affirmative "some x is y," the universal negative "no x is y," and the particular negative "some x is not y." The use of these letters is generally derived from the vowels of the two Latin verbs affirmo (or AIo), "I assert," and nego, "I deny." The use of the symbols dates from the thirteenth century, though some authorities trace their origin to the Greek logicians.
- *In symbolic logic, the symbol ∀ (an inverted letter A) is the universal quantifier.
- In mathematics,
- *A is often used as a digit meaning 10 (number) in 10 (number) in hexadecimal_and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 11 or greater,
- *blackboard bold (&
- *In the On-Line Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, each sequence has an ID consisting of the letter A and six base 10 digits.
- In medicine, A' (also, 'A+' or 'A-) is one of the human blood types.
- In music,
A, or "side A," refers to the top or first side of a vinyl record.
- In nutrition, A is a vitamin.
- In photography, most SLR cameras use A to signify aperture priority mode, where the user sets the aperture and the camera determines the shutter speed.
- In poetry, A (poem) is the major work of influential twentieth century author A (poem) is the major work of influential twentieth century author Louis Zukofsky.
- In political theory, a circumscribed "A" is an anarchist symbol.
- As the first letter of a postal code,
- On the serial numbers of United States dollars, A identifies the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
- In the SI system of units,
a is the symbol for the are, a unit of surface area equal to 100 square metres.
- As a timezone, A is the military designation for Coordinated Universal Time+1, also known as CET or Central European Time.
- Topographically, A is used to describe an object shaped like the capital letter A, such as an A-frame.See also
- Alpha (letter)
- A (Cyrillic)
- ª
- À
- Ã?
- Â
- Ã
- Ä (Ae)
- Ã… (Aa)
- Æ
- &
- &
- ∀
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