What is "kappa"

tenth letter of the Greek alphabet, from an Aramaized form of qoph; see K.

Etymology 1 n. The tenth letter of the Greek alphabet. Etymology 2

n. (context lang=en mythology) A tortoise-like creature in the Japanese mythology.

n. the 10th letter of the Greek alphabet

Kappa is a letter of the Greek alphabet.

Kappa may also refer to:

A , also known as , , or , is a yōkai demon or imp found in traditional Japanese folklore. The name is a combination of the words kawa (river) and wappa, a variant form of 童 warawa (also warabe) "child." In Shintō they are considered to be one of many suijin (水神,“water deity”), their yorishiro, or one of their temporary appearances. A hairy kappa is called a . In Japanese Buddhism they are considered to be a kind of hungry ogres. Therefore, Sha Wujing, who is a character from the Chinese story Journey to the West is described like a kappa in Japan. Kappa are distinguished for having a small pool of water suspended on top of their head, signifying their life force and habitat.

There are more than eighty other names associated with the kappa in different regions, including kawappa, gawappa, kōgo, mizushi, mizuchi, enkō, kawaso, suitengu, and dangame. Along with the oni and the tengu, the kappa is among the best-known yōkai in Japan. These various names of the creature vary by region and local folklore, while the term "kappa" remains the name most well known outside of Japan.

Kappa have been used to warn children of the dangers lurking in rivers and lakes, as kappa have been often said to try to lure people into water and pull them.

Kappa legends are said to be based on the Japanese giant salamander or hanzaki, an aggressive salamander that grabs its prey with its powerful jaws. Other theories suggest they are based on historical sightings of the now extinct Japanese river otter as seen from a distance, otters have been known to stand upright and a drunk, frightened or hallucinating person may think they are seeing a humanoid entity and not a wild animal.

The most well known place where it has been claimed Kappa supposedly reside is in the waters of '' Tōno '' in the Iwate Prefecture. The nearby Buddhist temple has dedicated a komainu dog statue to honor the kappa, which according to legend helped save extinguish the temple's fire . The Kappa is also venerated at the Sogenji Buddhist temple in the Asakusa district of Tokyo where according to tradition, a mummified arm of a Kappa is enshrined within the chapel hall.

Kappa (uppercase Κ, lowercase κ or cursive ϰ; , káppa) is the 10th letter of the Greek alphabet, used to represent the sound in Ancient and Modern Greek. In the system of Greek numerals, has a value of 20. It was derived from the Phoenician letter kaph . Letters that arose from kappa include the Roman K and Cyrillic К.

Greek proper names and placenames containing kappa are often written in English with "c" due to the Romans' transliterations into the Latin alphabet: Constantinople, Corinth, Crete. All formal modern romanizations of Greek now use the letter "k", however: Thessaloniki, Kalamata, Nikaia.

The cursive form is generally a simple font variant of lower-case kappa, but it is encoded separately in Unicode for occasions where it is used as a separate symbol in math and science. In mathematics, the kappa curve is named after this letter; the tangents of this curve were first calculated by Isaac Barrow in the 17th century.

Kappa is a family of Japanese sounding rockets, which were built starting from 1956.

Kappa is an Italian sportswear brand founded in 1967 in Turin, Italy

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, most commonly in the Kara-Tur sub-setting of the Forgotten Realms, the kappa is an evil creature based upon the kappa of Japanese mythology.

Kappa is a novel written by Ryunosuke Akutagawa in 1927.

The story is narrated by a psychiatric patient who speaks about his experiences in a country of Kappa. It is a satire of corruption in Japanese society. Akutagawa took his own life the year the novel appeared, partially out of fear that he was developing mental illness. It is seen as his masterpiece and the anniversary of his death, "Kappaki" , 24 July, is named after this novel.