- This article is about the
letter B. To see lists of usernames and bits of juicy speculation, you might want to go
somewhere else.
The letter B is the second letter in the
Latin alphabet. Its name in
English is bee [bi].
History
The letter B probably started as a
pictogram of the floorplan of a
house in
Egyptian hieroglyphs or the
Proto-semitic alphabet.
Egyptian hieroglyph house
|
Proto-Semitic house
|
Phoenician beth
|
Greek beta
|
Etruscan
|
Roman B
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By
1500 BC, the
Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later, which appeared in both the angular and more rounded forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the
Hebrew
beth.
When the
Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they changed its name to
beta and turned the letter upside-down and later added a second loop. In earlier Greek inscriptions, the letter faces to the left, but in the
Greek alphabet of later times it faces to the right, although there continued to be variations between pointed and rounded loops.
The
Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to what is now
Italy and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the
Etruscan alphabet to write
Latin, and the resulting letter, with rounded loops, has been preserved in the modern
Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including
English.
Typography
The modern lowercase letter b derives from later
Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.
The letter B should not be confused with the visually similar
German
ß.
Usage
In
English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter b denotes the
voiced bilabial plosive (
IPA /b/), as in bib. In English it is sometimes "silent", as in debt or comb. In medial position in
Spanish it denotes the
voiced bilabial fricative (IPA /β/). In
Estonian,
Icelandic, and in
Chinese transcription, B is not voiced, but is still contrasted to P, which is a
geminate /pp/ in
Estonian and an
aspirate /ph/ in Chinese and Icelandic.
In the
International Phonetic Alphabet and
X-SAMPA, letter /b/ denotes the
voiced bilabial plosive. Variants of the letter b denote related
bilabial consonants, like the
voiced bilabial implosive and the
bilabial trill. In
X-SAMPA, capital B denotes the
voiced bilabial fricative.
Codes for computing
Alternative representations of Mindspillage/B
In
Unicode the
capital B is codepoint U+0042 and the
lowercase b is U+0062.
The
ASCII code for capital B is 66 and for lowercase b is 98; or in
binary 01000010 and 01100010, correspondingly.
The
EBCDIC code for capital B is 194 and for lowercase b is 130.
The
numeric character references in
HTML and
XML are
"B" and "b" for upper and lower case
respectively.
Meanings for B
- As a
prefix B indicates second rate (where
A is first/top rate) e.g.
B-movie,
B-team.
- In
astronomy,
- B stands for a January 16 through 31 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g.
C/1865 B1, the Great Southern Comet of 1865) or asteroid (e.g.
(4156) 1988 BE).
- b often denotes the
semi-minor axis of an orbit.
- In
aviation, B (followed by a -) is the
ICAO prefix for civil aircraft registered in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
-
Brassiere cup size B.
- In
chemistry, B is the symbol for the
chemical element
boron.
- In
chess, B is a notation symbol (descriptive style) for the
bishop piece.
- In the
RGB color model, B stands for the color
blue.
- In
computer science and
computing,
- b is an alternate symbol for
bit (
IEEE 1541; IEC 60027 recommends "bit" instead).
- B is the usual symbol for
byte (IEEE 1541 and IEC 60027). It is a fairly common error to use a lowercase b instead.
- B is the name of the
B programming language and the
B-Method, a leading
formal method.
<B>
and </B>
are the
HTML tags for marking the start and end of
boldface type.
can be used to indicate a
Boolean
type, especially in
formal specifications.
- B is a security division ("Mandatory Protection") in the
TCSEC.
- A
b-tree is a binary tree, a type of indexed data structure.
- In the diaries of
Edwina Currie, B was the code name for
John Major with whom the author was having an affair.
- In
education, B is a "good"
grade, one below the top grade of A.
- In
electrical engineering,
- In
English
slang, B is a
euphemism for
bastard or
bitch.
- In
film, the term "B," as in
B-movie, referred to the less noteworthy film in a
double feature and currently refers to any low quality, low profile film.
- In
finance, B is the
New York Stock Exchange
ticker symbol for
Barnes Group Inc..
- In
international licence plate codes, B stands for
Belgium.
- In
international paper sizes, B is a series of sizes with sides of even fractions of a metre. The B series is a scaled version of the A series.
- In
mathematics,
- In
medicine, B (also, B+ or B-) is one of the human
blood types.
- In
metrology,
- B was sometimes used in the early twentieth century as a prefix for "
billion" (e.g.
BeV).
- B was the symbol for the
candle (from the French bougie), a unit of
luminous intensity.
- b was the symbol for the
barn, a unit of effective cross-section in particle physics.
- In
music,
-
B is a
note.
- B, or "B-side", is the second or reverse side of a
vinyl record; also called the flip side.
- In the
North American
National Hockey League, the
Boston Bruins are sometimes referred to as the "Bs" because of the letter B on the front of their jerseys.
- In
nutrition, B refers to a group of
vitamins.
- In
photography, B is a
shutter speed.
- In
physics,
- As the first letter of a
postal code,
- In
radiocommunication, B is the
ITU prefix allocated to
China.
- In
rail transport, B is the
UIC classification for the
locomotive
wheel arrangement known as
0-4-0 in the
Whyte notation; a locomotive with two powered axles (and thus four wheels) in which the axles are linked by gearing or
side rods.
- On the serial numbers of
United States dollars, B identifies the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
- B is the letter that was the beginning of
The Clock Crew, due to it being featured in a movie by StrawberryClock on
Newgrounds
- /b/ is the random board on several
imageboards, such as
4chan,
2chan,
iichan, and
420chan.
- B is also seen as the unlucky letter of alphabet, as it looks like an scratched together
thirteen.
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
B.
Source
This version of
B.