The letter O is the fifteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is o , plural o's or oes (both pronounced ).

History

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Egyptian hieroglyph `ir	Proto-Semitic O	Phoenician O	Etruscan O	Greek Omicron	-	D4

The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin (eye), which represented a consonant, probably the pharyngeal consonant (IPA ) pronounced similar to the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a similar Egyptian hieroglyph for "eye".

The Greeks are thought to have come up with the innovation of vowels, and lacking a pharyngeal consonant, employed this letter as the Greek (O) to represent the vowel /o/, a sound it maintained in Etruscan and Latin. In Greek, a variation of the form later came to distinguish this long sound (Omega, meaning "large O") from the short o (Omicron, meaning "small o").

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