a en · SYM · etymology 1
Pronunciation
- /eɪ/ (phoneme)
- /ɑː/ (phoneme)
- /æ/ (phoneme)
- /ə/ (phoneme)
Etymology
The letter name is from Middle English ā, from Old French, ultimately from Latin ā. Use of the Latin letter in (Old) English displaced the futhorc letter ᚪ (a) beginning in the 7th century, and partially also ᚫ (æ).
Meanings
-
(letter, lowercase) The first letter of the English alphabet, written in the Latin script.
In the seventh grade I admired a charismatic, witty girl who had a particular way of writing her lowercase a's. After some practice, I took to writing my lowercase a's in the same fashion.
2014 February 23, Rivka Galchen, “What's Become of the So-Called Literary Bad Boy?”, in The New York Times Book Review, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 19 Feb 2014:Passmore. Capital P-a-double s-m-o-r-e.
1926, George Kelly, Craig's Wife, Act I, page 5:Note that with 18-point type, fifteen capital A's, twenty-five lowercase a's, and twelve 1's are obtained with one font. With this information, it is possible to refer to Table 10-1 which gives the number of characters for each letter, punctuation mark, or figure.
1974, Ervin A. Dennis, John D. Jenkins, “A Font of Type”, in Comprehensive Graphic Arts, Indianapolis, I.N.: Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc., →ISBN, page 26, column 2:Across every sheet of paper were lines and lines of letters of the alphabet. A row of a's followed by a row of b's and so on, pages of them, like pages from a copy book, crudely formed as if from the hand of a young child.
2013, Margaret McPhee, Mistress to the Marquis, Toronto, Ont.: Harlequin Historical, →ISBN, page 249:This expression is zero, for we have replaced the column of a''''s by the column of bs and hence the determinant has two columns identical.
1917, John Wesley Young, Frank Millett Morgan, Elementary Mathematical Analysis, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, page 487:
Forms
| Spelling | Features | Labels | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| a's | Number=Plur | lexicographic | |
| A | uppercase | lexicographic | |
| as | Number=Plur | lexicographic |
Deriveds
ia (Digraph sequences) · ai (Digraph sequences) · aw (Digraph sequences) · eau (Digraph sequences) · au (Digraph sequences) · ay (Digraph sequences) · ua (Digraph sequences) · oa (Digraph sequences) · ah (Digraph sequences) · ae (Digraph sequences) · ea (Digraph sequences)
Relateds
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