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  • 21 Aug, 2019

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E
E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel 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 e (pronounced /ˈiː/); plural es, Es or E's.

It is the most commonly used letter in many languages, including Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Latvian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Name

In English, the name of the letter is the "long E" sound, pronounced /ˈiː/. In most other languages, its name matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables.

Pronunciation of the name of the letter ⟨e⟩ in European languages

History

Egyptian hieroglyph
qʼ 		Proto-Sinaitic Proto-Canaanite hillul Phoenician
He 		Western Greek
Epsilon 		Etruscan
E 		Latin
E
A28
 Latin E

The Latin letter 'E' differs little from its source, the Greek letter epsilon, 'Ε'. This in turn comes from the Semitic letter hê, which has been suggested to have started as a praying or calling human figure (hillul, 'jubilation'), and was most likely based on a similar Egyptian hieroglyph that indicated a different pronunciation.

In Semitic, the letter represented /h/ (and /e/ in foreign words); in Greek, hê became the letter epsilon, used to represent /e/. The various forms of the Old Italic script and the Latin alphabet followed this usage.

Use in writing systems

Pronunciation of ⟨e⟩ by language
Orthography Phonemes
Standard Chinese (Pinyin) /ə/
English /ɛ/, /iː/, /ə/, /ɜː/, /ɪə/
French /ə/, /ɛ/, /e/
German /ɛ/, /eː/, /e/
Portuguese /e/, /ɛ/, /i/, /ɨ/, /j/, /ɐ/, /ɐi/
Spanish /e/
Turkish /e/

English

Although Middle English spelling used ⟨e⟩ to represent long and short /e/, the Great Vowel Shift changed long /eː/ (as in me or bee) to /iː/ while short /ɛ/ (as in met or bed) remained a mid vowel. In unstressed syllables, this letter is usually pronounced either as /ɪ/ or /ə/. In other cases, the letter is silent, generally at the end of words like queue.

Other languages

In the orthography of many languages, it represents either [e], [e̞], [ɛ], or some variation (such as a nasalized version) of these sounds, often with diacritics (as: ⟨e ê é è ë ē ĕ ě ẽ ė ẹ ę ẻ⟩) to indicate contrasts. Less commonly, as in French, German, or Saanich, ⟨e⟩ represents a mid-central vowel /ə/. Digraphs with ⟨e⟩ are common to indicate either diphthongs or monophthongs, such as ⟨ea⟩ or ⟨ee⟩ for /iː/ or /eɪ/ in English, ⟨ei⟩ for /aɪ/ in German, and ⟨eu⟩ for /ø/ in French or /ɔɪ/ in German.

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses ⟨e⟩ for the close-mid front unrounded vowel or the mid front unrounded vowel.

Frequency

E is the most common (or highest-frequency) letter in the English language alphabet and several other European languages, which has implications in both cryptography and data compression. This makes it a harder letter to use when writing lipograms.

Other uses

Main article: E (disambiguation)
A scientific calculator display showing the Avogadro constant (6.02214076×10 reciprocal moles) in E notation
  • In the hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system, "E" corresponds to the number 14 in decimal (base 10) counting.
  • "e" is also commonly used to denote Euler's number.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

  • 𐤄 : Semitic letter He (letter), from which the following symbols originally derive:
    • Ε ε : Greek letter Epsilon, from which the following symbols originally derive:
      • Е е : Cyrillic letter Ye
      • Є є : Ukrainian Ye
      • Э э : Cyrillic letter E
      • Ⲉ ⲉ : Coptic letter Ei
      • 𐌄 : Old Italic E, which is the ancestor of modern Latin E
        • ᛖ : Runic letter Ehwaz, which is possibly a descendant of Old Italic E
      • 𐌴 : Gothic letter eyz

Derived signs, symbols and abbreviations

Other representations

Computing

Character information
Preview E e Ｅ ｅ
Unicode name LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E LATIN SMALL LETTER E FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER E
Encodings decimal hex dec hex dec hex dec hex
Unicode 69 U+0045 101 U+0065 65317 U+FF25 65349 U+FF45
UTF-8 69 45 101 65 239 188 165 EF BC A5 239 189 133 EF BD 85
Numeric character reference E E e e Ｅ Ｅ ｅ ｅ
EBCDIC family 197 C5 133 85
ASCII 69 45 101 65
Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'e' is signed by extending the index finger of the right hand touching the tip of index on the left hand, with all fingers of left hand open.

See also

  • E notation is used by scientific calculators to indicate a power of ten multiplier.
  • E-number – Codes for food additives