What is "s"

S \S\ ([e^]s), the nineteenth letter of the English alphabet, is a consonant, and is often called a sibilant, in allusion to its hissing sound. It has two principal sounds; one a mere hissing, as in sack, this; the other a vocal hissing (the same as that of z), as in is, wise. Besides these it sometimes has the sounds of sh and zh, as in sure, measure. It generally has its hissing sound at the beginning of words, but in the middle and at the end of words its sound is determined by usage. In a few words it is silent, as in isle, d['e]bris. With the letter h it forms the digraph sh. See Guide to pronunciation, [sect][sect] 255-261.

Note: Both the form and the name of the letter S are derived from the Latin, which got the letter through the Greek from the Ph[ae]nician. The ultimate origin is Egyptian. S is etymologically most nearly related to c, z, t, and r; as, in ice, OE. is; E. hence, OE. hennes; E. rase, raze; erase, razor; that, G. das; E. reason, F. raison, L. ratio; E. was, were; chair, chaise (see C, Z, T, and R.).

abbr. 1 (label en metrology) abbreviation for the scruple (qualifier: unit of mass in the apothecaries' system) 2 (alternative form of s. English) letter (Latn-def en letter 19 ess) num. (Latn-def en ordinal 19 ess)

1. n. 1/60 of a minute; the basic unit of time adopted under the Systeme International d'Unites [syn: second, sec]

2. an abundant tasteless odorless multivalent nonmetallic element; best known in yellow crystals; occurs in many sulphide and sulphate minerals and even in native form (especially in volcanic regions) [syn: sulfur, sulphur, atomic number 16]

3. the cardinal compass point that is at 180 degrees [syn: south, due south]

4. a unit of conductance equal to the reciprocal of an ohm [syn: mho, siemens, reciprocal ohm]

5. the 19th letter of the Roman alphabet

6. (thermodynamics) a thermodynamic quantity representing the amount of energy in a system that is no longer available for doing mechanical work; "entropy increases as matter and energy in the universe degrade to an ultimate state of inert uniformity" [syn: randomness, entropy]

S̈, s̈ in lower case, also s with diaeresis, is a letter in the Chechen language, where it represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative. It has the same sound as the Slavic š, the Turkish ş and the Albanian "sh".

In the Chechen language, it was changed from the original ş to the s̈, at the same time the ç was changed into the c̈.

In older Czech orthography s̈ was used in codas instead of ſſ for /ʃ/, modern orthography uses š for all instances.

The grapheme Š, š ( S with caron) is used in various contexts representing the sh sound usually denoting the voiceless postalveolar fricative. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this sound is denoted with ʃ, but the lowercase š is used in the Americanist phonetic notation, as well as in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. It represents the same sound as the Turkic Ş.

For use in computer systems, Š and š are at Unicode codepoints U+0160 and U+0161 (Alt 0352 and Alt 0353 for input), respectively. In HTML code, the entities Š and š can also be used to represent the characters.

Ŝ or ŝ (S circumflex) is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .

Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do most Latin-based Slavic alphabets ( Polish is the most notable exception). Letters and digraphs that are similar to ŝ (also based on s) and represent the same sound include Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Serbian Latin, and Croatian š, and English ''sh", and Portuguese "x","ch". The Cyrillic letter ш represents the same sound.

Ŝ is used in ISO 9:1995 (standard of transliteration into Latin characters of Cyrillic characters) for letter Щ.

Ş, ş (S-cedilla) is a letter of the Azerbaijani, Gagauz, Turkish and Turkmen alphabets. It is also used in the Roman alphabets of Tatar, Crimean Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Chechen, and Kurdish. It commonly represents /ʃ/, the voiceless postalveolar fricative.

S is a statistical programming language developed primarily by John Chambers and (in earlier versions) Rick Becker and Allan Wilks of Bell Laboratories. The aim of the language, as expressed by John Chambers, is "to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully".

The two modern implementations of S are R, a part of the GNU free software project; and S-PLUS, a commercial product sold by TIBCO Software .

Three services in the New York City Subway are designated as a S ( shuttle) service. These services operate as full-time shuttles. In addition, four services run as shuttles during late night hours but retain their regular service designations.

S (에스) is a South Korean project group consisting of three members: Kangta, Lee Ji-hoon and Shin Hye-sung. The group debuted in 2003, under the SM Entertainment label. After 11 years, they released and promoted another mini-album in 2014.

Ś ( minuscule: ś) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from S with the addition of an acute accent. It is used in Polish and Montenegrin alphabet, and in certain other languages:

• Slavic languages - usually the palatalized form of /s/

:* Polish language - ( voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative)

:* Montenegrin language - along with the digraph "sj"

:* In the Belarusian Łacinka alphabet for сь

:* Lower Sorbian language -

• Indo-Aryan: voiceless postalveolar fricative

:* Transliteration of Sanskrit and modern Indic languages - see IAST

:* Romany alphabet

• transliteration of a palatalized s in the Lydian language
• In Proto-Semitic, a reconstructed voiceless lateral fricative phoneme , the parent phoneme of Ge'ez Śawt ሠ.
• a sibilant phoneme of the earliest phase of the Sumerian language.
• transliteration of a letter of the Etruscan alphabet, related to San and Tsade.

Ṡ (lowercase ṡẛ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed by S with the addition of a dot above.

Irish orthography, the dot was used only for ẛ ṡ, while the following h was used for ch ph th; lenition of other letters was not indicated. Later the two systems spread to the entire set of lenitable consonants and competed with each other. Eventually the standard practice was to use the dot when writing in Gaelic script and the following h when writing in antiqua. Thus ċ and ch represent the same phonetic element in Modern Irish.

S is the nineteenth letter of the English alphabet.

S may also refer to:

is a light novel series with homoerotic themes written by Saki Aida with art by Chiharu Nara. It's about a detective who goes undercover and who begins a relationship with his "S" - his spy. It was published in English by Digital Manga Publishing between May 2008 and February 2009.

S was a line operated by the Los Angeles Railway from 1895 to 1958, and by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority from 1958 to 1963.

S is an axiomatic set theory set out by George Boolos in his article, Boolos (1989). S, a first-order theory, is two-sorted because its ontology includes “stages” as well as sets. Boolos designed S to embody his understanding of the “iterative conception of set“ and the associated iterative hierarchy. S has the important property that all axioms of Zermelo set theory Z, except the axiom of Extensionality and the axiom of Choice, are theorems of S or a slight modification thereof.

S is the second extended play (EP) by American recording artist SZA; it was self-released on October 28, 2013. After meeting members of independent label Top Dawg and releasing her debut EP See.SZA.Run (2013), SZA began working on S, beginning recording in May 2013. SZA worked with a variety of producers on the album, including Zodiac, Patrick Lukens, BrandUn DeShay, WNDRBRD, Waren Vaughn and Felix Snow. S is characterized as an alt-R&B album with production that "twists and mutates."

Upon release S was met with critical acclaim from music critics, who commended the extended play's musical themes and direction. SZA promoted the extended play with the release of a music video for the song "Ice Moon"; the video was directed by Lemar & Dauley.

S is the fifth novel in the Ring series by Koji Suzuki. It served as the basis of the films Sadako 3D and Sadako 3D 2.

This novel was translated into French on April 10, 2014, and is sold under the title 'Sadako (novel)'