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Find sources: "O" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (November 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)This article is about the letter of the alphabet. For the number zero, see 0. For other uses, see O (disambiguation).For technical reasons, ":O" redirects here. For the keyboard symbol, see List of emoticons.OO o(See below)Writing cursive forms of OUsageWriting systemLatin scriptTypeAlphabeticLanguage of originLatin languagePhonetic usage[o][o̞][ɔ]/oʊ/[uː][ʌ][ɒ[ø][a][ʕ][w][◌ʷ][ʊ]Unicode codepointU+004F,U+006FAlphabeticalposition15HistoryDevelopmentD4Proto-sinaiticʿayinProtoayin.svgPhoenician AyinΟ ο𐌏O oTime period ~-700 to presentDescendantⱺØ
• Œ • Ɔ • Ơ • Ỏ • Ꝋ• ∅ • º • ℅SistersᴥƸʿОЮӨעعܥࠏዐࡘ• Ö • ჺՈ ոՕ օᱳᱜᱣVariations(See below)OtherOther letters commonly used with o(x)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.OISO basicLatin alphabetAaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZzvteO, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is o (pronounced /ˈoʊ/), plural oes.[1]HistoryLate Renaissance or early Baroque design of an O, from 1627
Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was ʿeyn, meaning "eye", and indeed its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, cf. Proto-Sinaitic script). Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably [ʕ], the sound represented by the cognate Arabic letter ع ʿayn.[citation needed] The use of this Phoenician letter for a vowel sound is due to the early Greek alphabets, which adopted the letter as O "omicron" to represent the vowel /o/. The letter was adopted with this value in the Old Italic alphabets, including the early Latin alphabet. In Greek, a variation of the form later came to distinguish this lo