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Chi (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; ) is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, pronounced as [kai] in English. Its value in Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 was an aspirated velar stop
Voiceless velar plosive

The voiceless velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k....
  (in the Western Greek alphabet: /ks/).

In Koine Greek
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
 and later dialects it became a fricative
Fricative consonant

Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
 along with T and F
Phi (letter)

Phi , pronounced [] in Modern Greek language and as [] in English, is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greek, it represents [], a voiceless labiodental fricative....
. In Modern Greek
Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
, is has two distinct pronunciations: In front of high
Close vowel

A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
 or front vowel
Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
s ( or ) it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative
Voiceless palatal fricative

The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C....
 , as in German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 ich or like the h in some pronunciations of the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 words hew and human.






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Chi (uppercase ?, lowercase ?; ) is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet
Greek alphabet

The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th century BC or early 8th century BCE....
, pronounced as [kai] in English. Its value in Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning across the Archaic Greece , Classical Greece , and Hellenistic civilization periods of ancient Greece and the classical antiquity....
 was an aspirated velar stop
Voiceless velar plosive

The voiceless velar plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is k....
  (in the Western Greek alphabet: /ks/).

In Koine Greek
Koine Greek

Koine Greek is the popular form of Greek which emerged in post-Classical antiquity . Other names are Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Common, or New Testament Greek....
 and later dialects it became a fricative
Fricative consonant

Fricatives are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two Place of articulation close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate, in the case of German language , the final consonant of Bach; or the side of the tongue ag...
 along with T and F
Phi (letter)

Phi , pronounced [] in Modern Greek language and as [] in English, is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greek, it represents [], a voiceless labiodental fricative....
. In Modern Greek
Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers the varieties of Greek spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic modern features of the language had been present centuries earli...
, is has two distinct pronunciations: In front of high
Close vowel

A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
 or front vowel
Front vowel

A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
s ( or ) it is pronounced as a voiceless palatal fricative
Voiceless palatal fricative

The voiceless palatal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some Speech communication languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is C....
 , as in German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 ich or like the h in some pronunciations of the English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 words hew and human. In front of low
Open vowel

An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in most spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth....
 or back vowel
Back vowel

A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant....
s ( or ) and consonants, it is pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative
Voiceless velar fricative

The voiceless velar fricative, informally known as the hard ch, is a type of consonantal sound used in some Speech communication languages....
 .

In the system of Greek numerals
Greek numerals

Greek numerals are a numeral system using letters of the Greek alphabet. They are also known by the names Milesian numerals, Alexandrian numerals, or alphabetic numerals....
 it has a value of 600.

In ancient times, some dialects of Greek used the chi instead of xi to represent the /ks/ sound. This was borrowed into the early Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 language, which led to the letter X being used for the same sound in Latin, and the modern languages which use the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. It evolved from the western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumae alphabet, and was initially developed by the Ancient Romes to write the Latin....
.

Chi was also included in the Cyrillic alphabet
Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic alphabet is a family of alphabets, subsets of which are used by five Slavic languages national languages as well as non-Slavic . It is also used by many other languages of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Siberia and other languages in the past....
 as the letter ?
Kha

eading=Cyrillic letter Kha|Image=...
, with the phonetic value /x/ or /h/.

Chi is the basis for the name Chiastic structure
Chiastic structure

Chiastic structure is a literary structure used in the Torah, the Bible, as well as in other texts. Concepts or ideas are placed in a special symmetric order or pattern in a chiastic structure to emphasize them....
 and the name of Chiasmus
Chiasmus

In rhetoric, chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted Parallelism ....
.

In Plato
Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greece Greeks philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Platonic Academy in Ancient Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world....
's Timaeus
Timaeus

Timaeus is a Greek name, meaning "Honour". It may refer to:*Timaeus , a Socratic dialogue by Plato*Timaeus of Locri, the 5th-century Pythagorean philosopher, appearing in Plato's dialogue...
, it is explained that the two bands which form the soul of the world
Anima mundi (spirit)

World soul is a pure ethereal spirit, which was proclaimed by some ancient philosophers to be diffused throughout all nature. It was thought to animate all matter in the same sense in which the soul was thought to animate the human....
 cross each other like the letter ?.

Chi or X
X

X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English language is spelled ex , plural exes .History...
 is often used to abbreviate the name Christ
Christ

Christ is the English language term for the Greek meaning "the anointing", which is a title given to the Reigning Messiah in the given age of the Zodiac....
, as in the holiday Christmas
Christmas

Christmas , also referred to as Christmas Day, is an annual holiday celebrated on December 25 that commemorates the birth of Jesus. The day marks the beginning of the larger season of Christmastide, which lasts Twelve Days of Christmas....
 (Xmas
Xmas

"Xmas" and "X-mas" are common abbreviations of the word "Christmas". They are sometimes pronounced /'?ks.m?s/, but they, and variants such as "Xtemass", originated as handwriting abbreviations for the correct pronunciation /'k??s.m?s/....
). When fused within a single typespace with the Greek letter Rho
Rho (letter)

Rho is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Proto-Canaanite alphabet R? "head" ....
, it is called the labarum
Labarum

For the article about the "PX" symbol see Chi RhoThe Labarum was a typographic ligature formed from Chi and Rho , which had particular symbolic significance to the Roman Empires, Ancient Greece, and to the Christianity of Late Antiquity in general....
 and used to represent the person of Jesus Christ.

The optic chiasm
Optic chiasm

The optic chiasm or optic chiasma is the part of the brain where the optic nerves partially cross....
, an x-shaped connection of the optic nerves leading to the eye, got its name from the letter chi because of its shape; likewise, the shape of the letter chi is the origin of the rhetorical device
Rhetorical device

In rhetoric, a rhetorical device or resource of language is a technique that an author or speaker uses to evoke an emotional response in the audience ....
 chiasmus
Chiasmus

In rhetoric, chiasmus is the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted Parallelism ....
.

Chi is also frequently used in statistics
Statistics

Statistics is a Mathematics pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data. It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data....
.

See also