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P
P p
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Sound values	/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.

ISO basic Latin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
v t e

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.

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

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

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

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 ᶈ
• Turned P
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to P:
  • 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

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)
• Ꝑ ꝑ, Ꝓ ꝓ, Ꝕ, ꝕ : Various forms of P were used for medieval scribal abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

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

Other

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

• ISO basic Latin letters