X is the twenty-fourth
letterA letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....
in the
basic modern Latin alphabetThe International Organization for Standardization basic Latin alphabet consists of the following 26 letters:By the 1960s it became apparent to the computer and telecommunications industries in the First World that a non-proprietary method of encoding characters was needed...
.
Uses
In
mathematicsMathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
,
x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of
x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the
ArabicArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
word
šay' شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic algebra texts such as the
Al-Jabr , also known under a shorter name spelled as Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala, Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala and other transliterations) is a mathematical book written in Arabic in approximately AD 820 by the Persian (Arabic for "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing", in...
. It was subsequently taken into
Old SpanishOld Spanish, also known as Old Castilian or Mediaeval Spanish , is an early form of the Spanish language that was spoken on the Iberian Peninsula from the tenth century until roughly the beginning of the fifteenth century, before a consonantic readjustment gave rise to the evolution of modern...
with the pronunciation /ʃei/, which was written
xei and soon habitually abbreviated to
. (The
SpanishSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
pronunciationPronunciation refers to the way a word or a language is spoken, or the manner in which someone utters a word. If one is said to have "correct pronunciation", then it refers to both within a particular dialect....
of ⟨x⟩ has changed since.) This started the habit of using letters to represent quantities in
algebraAlgebra is the branch of mathematics concerning the study of the rules of operations and relations, and the constructions and concepts arising from them, including terms, polynomials, equations and algebraic structures...
.
It may also be used to signify the
multiplicationMultiplication is the mathematical operation of scaling one number by another. It is one of the four basic operations in elementary arithmetic ....
operation when a more appropriate glyph is unavailable. In mathematics, an "
italicizedIn typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
x" (
) is often used to avoid potential confusion with the multiplication symbol. Another usage of X in mathematics is
which is used to represent the
cross productIn mathematics, the cross product, vector product, or Gibbs vector product is a binary operation on two vectors in three-dimensional space. It results in a vector which is perpendicular to both of the vectors being multiplied and normal to the plane containing them...
.
Other non-mathematical uses include:
- As a result of its use in math, X is often used to represent unknowns in other circumstances (e.g. Person X, Place X, etc.; see also Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
).
- X-rays are so called because their discoverer did not know what they were.
- X has been used as a namesake for a generation of humans: Generation X
Generation X, commonly abbreviated to Gen X, is the generation born after the Western post–World War II baby boom ended. While there is no universally agreed upon time frame, the term generally includes people born from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, usually no later than 1981 or...
, commonly abbreviated to Gen X. It is the generation born after the baby boomA baby boom is any period marked by a greatly increased birth rate. This demographic phenomenon is usually ascribed within certain geographical bounds and when the number of annual births exceeds 2 per 100 women...
ended, ranging from 1961 to 1981.
- It is commonly used in correspondence along with the letter O to indicate affection (as in "XOXO" - the Xs representing kisses and the Os hugs).
- X is also used for referring to 'the end of conversation'.
- X is used by the illiterate in lieu of a signature and indicates a signature line on forms.
- In cartoons, Xs are drawn instead of eyes to indicate the death of a character.
- X is commonly used as a generic mark (selecting an item on a form, indicating a location on a map, etc.).
History
In
Ancient GreekAncient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, ⟨Χ⟩ and ⟨Ψ⟩ were among several variants of the same letter, used originally for /kʰ/ and later, in western areas such as
ArcadiaArcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
, as a simplification of the
digraphA digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
⟨ΧΣ⟩ for /ks/. In the end, more conservative eastern forms became the standard of Classical Greek, and thus ⟨Χ⟩
(ChiChi is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet, pronounced as in English.-Greek:-Ancient Greek:Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop .-Koine Greek:...
) stands for /kʰ/ (later /x/). However, the Etruscans had taken over ⟨Χ⟩ from western Greek, and it therefore stands for /ks/ in Etruscan and
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
.
The letter ⟨Χ⟩ ~ ⟨Ψ⟩ for /kʰ/ was a Greek addition to the alphabet, placed after the Semitic letters along with
phiPhi , pronounced or sometimes in English, and in modern Greek, is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greek, it represents , a voiceless labiodental fricative. In Ancient Greek it represented , an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive...
⟨Φ⟩ for /pʰ/. (The variant ⟨Ψ⟩ later replaced the digraph ⟨ΦΣ⟩ for /ps/;
omegaOmega is the 24th and last letter of the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system, it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" , as opposed to omicron, which means "little O"...
was a later addition.) There has been much mostly fruitless debate about the origins of these added letters.
| Greek Xi |
Etruscan X |
 |
 |
Usage
In the
International Phonetic AlphabetThe International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic...
, [x] represents a
voiceless velar fricativeThe voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....
.
In Latin,
X stood for [ks]. In some languages, as a result of assorted phonetic changes, handwriting adaptations or simply spelling convention,
X has other pronunciations:[ʃ]. Additionally there is the digraph
tx [tʃ]. usually represents [ks], except when it's used for the island of
TexelTexel is a municipality and an island in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. It is the biggest and most populated of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea, and also the westernmost of this archipelago, which extends to Denmark...
, which is pronounced
Tessel. This is because of a historical sound-changes in Dutch, where all -x- sounds have been replaced with -s- sounds. Words with an
-x- in the Dutch language are nowadays usually
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s. is typically a sign for the compound consonants [ks]; or sometimes when followed by an accented syllable beginning with a vowel, or when followed by silent h and an accented vowel [ɡz] (e.g.
exhaust,
exam); usually [z] at the beginnings of words (e.g.
xylophone,
Xenon), and in some compounds keeps the [z] sound, as in (e.g.
meta-xylene). It also makes the sound [kʃ] in words ending in -xion (typically used only in British-based spellings of the language; American spellings tend to use -ction). Before
i or
u it can also represent the sounds [ɡʒ] or [kʃ], for example, in the words
luxury and
sexual, respectively: these result from earlier [ɡzj] and [ksj]. Final x is always [ks] (e.g.
ax/
axe) except in loan words such as
faux (see French, below).
In abbreviations, it can represent "trans-" (e.g. XMIT for transmit, XFER for transfer), "cross-" (e.g. X-ing for crossing; XREF for
cross-referenceA cross-reference is an instance within a document which refers to related or synonymous information elsewhere, usually within the same work. To cross-reference or to cross-refer is to make such connections. The term "cross-reference" is often abbreviated as x-ref, xref, or, in computer science,...
), "Christ" as short hand for the
labarumThe labarum was a vexillum that displayed the "Chi-Rho" symbol ☧, formed from the first two Greek letters of the word "Christ" — Chi and Rho . It was used by the Roman emperor Constantine I...
(e.g. Xmas for Christmas; Xian for Christian), the "Crys" in Crystal (XTAL), or various words starting with "ex" (e.g. XL for extra large; XOR for
exclusive-orThe logical operation exclusive disjunction, also called exclusive or , is a type of logical disjunction on two operands that results in a value of true if exactly one of the operands has a value of true...
).
There are very few English words that start with X – the least amount of any letter. Many of the words that do start with X are either standardized trademarks (XEROX) or acronyms (XC). No words in the
Basic EnglishBasic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language...
vocabulary begin with
X, but it occurs in words beginning with other letters. It is often found in a word with an E before it. X is the third most rarely used letter in the
English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
., silent (or [z] in liaison if the next word starts with a vowel). This usage arose as a handwriting alteration of final
-us. Two exceptions are pronounced [s]:
six and
dix. It is pronounced [z] in
sixième and
dixième.
- In Italian
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, X is either pronounced [ks], as in extra, when it is followed by a consonant, or [gz], as in the words uxorio and xilofono, when it is followed by a vowel. In several northern regional languages, notably Venetian, it represents the voiced sibilant [z]. It is also used, mainly amongst the young, as a short written form for "per", meaning "for": for example, "x sempre" ("forever"). This because in Italian the multiplication signThe multiplication sign is the symbol ×. The symbol is similar to the lowercase letter x but is a more symmetric saltire, and has different uses. It is also known as St...
(similar to x) is called "per".
- In Norwegian
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, X is generally pronounced [ks], but since the nineteenth century there has been a tendency to spell it out as ks whenever possible; it may still be retained in names of people, though it is fairly rare, and occurs mostly in foreign words and SMS languageSMS language or textese is a term for the abbreviations and slang most commonly used due to the necessary brevity of mobile phone text messaging, in particular the widespread SMS SMS language or textese (also known as txt-speak, txtese, chatspeak, txt, txtspk, txtk, txto, texting language, txt...
. Usage in SwedishSwedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, DanishDanish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
, GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and FinnishFinnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
is similar., X was pronounced [ʃ], as it is still currently in other Iberian Romance languagesThe Iberian Romance languages or Ibero-Romance languages are the Romance languages that developed on the Iberian Peninsula, an area consisting primarily of Spain, Portugal, and Andorra....
. Later, the sound evolved to a hard [x] sound. In modern Spanish, the hard [x] sound is spelled with a j, or with a g before e and i, though x is still retained for some names (notably México, which alternates with Méjico). Now, X represents the sound [s] (word-initially), or the consonant cluster [ks] (e.g. oxígeno, examen). Even more rarely, the x can be pronounced [ʃ] as in Old Spanish in some proper nouns such as Raxel (a variant of RachelRachel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife...
) and UxmalUxmal was dominant from 875 to 900 CE. The site appears to have been the capital of a regional state in the Puuc region from 850-950 CE. The Maya dynasty expanded their dominion over their neighbors. This prominence didn't last long...
.
- In Galician
Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...
(a language related to Portuguese and spoken in Northwestern Spain), and LeoneseThe Leonese language is the endonym term used to refer to all vernacular Romance dialects of the Astur-Leonese linguistic group in the Spanish provinces of León and Zamora; Astur-Leonese also includes the dialects...
, used in Spain, x is pronounced [ʃ] in most cases. In learned words, such as 'taxativo' (taxing), the x is pronounced [ks]. However, Galician speakers tend to pronounce it [s], especially when it appears in implosive position, such as in 'externo' (external).
- In Catalan
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, x has three sounds; the most common is [ʃ]; as in 'xarop' (syrup). Other sounds are: [ks]; 'fixar' (to fix), [ɡz]; 'examen'. In addition [ʃ] gets voiced to [ʒ] before voiced consonants; 'caixmir'. Catalan also has the digraph tx, pronounced [tʃ].
- In Portuguese
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, x has four sounds; the most common is [ʃ], as in 'xícara' (cup). The other sounds are: [ks] as in 'fênix/fénix' (phoenix), [s], as in 'próximo' (close/next), and (the rarest) [z], as in 'exagerado' (exaggerate).
- In Venetian
Venetian or Venetan is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where of five million inhabitants almost all can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia...
it represents the voiced alveolar sibilant [z] much like in Portuguese 'exagerado', English 'xylophone' or in the French 'sixième'. Examples from medieval texts include raxon (reason), prexon (prison), dexerto (desert), chaxa/caxa (home). Nowadays, the best-known word is xe (is/are). The most notable exception to this rule is the name Venexia [veˈnɛsja] in which x has evolved from the initial voiced sibilant [z] to the present day voiceless sibilant.
- In Uyghur
Uyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
(Latin scriptUyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...
), x represents the sound χ.
- In Albanian
Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...
, x represents [dz], while the digraphA digraph or digram is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined...
xh represents [dʒ].
- In Maltese
Maltese is the national language of Malta, and a co-official language of the country alongside English,while also serving as an official language of the European Union, the only Semitic language so distinguished. Maltese is descended from Siculo-Arabic...
, x is pronounced [ʃ] or, in some cases, [ʒ] (only in loanwords such as 'televixin', and not for all speakers).
Additionally, in languages for which the Latin alphabet has been adapted only recently,
x has been used for various sounds, in some cases inspired by European usage, but in others, for consonants uncommon in Europe. For these no Latin letter stands out as an obvious choice, and since most of the various European pronunciations of
x can be written by other means, the letter becomes available for more unusual sounds.
- X represents [x] in e.g. Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani or Azeri or Torki is a language belonging to the Turkic language family, spoken in southwestern Asia by the Azerbaijani people, primarily in Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran...
, KurdishKurdish is a dialect continuum spoken by the Kurds in western Asia. It is part of the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian group of Indo-European languages....
, LojbanSee also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
, TatarThe Tatar language , or more specifically Kazan Tatar, is a Turkic language spoken by the Tatars of historical Kazan Khanate, including modern Tatarstan and Bashkiria...
, UzbekUzbek is a Turkic language and the official language of Uzbekistan. It has about 25.5 million native speakers, and it is spoken by the Uzbeks in Uzbekistan and elsewhere in Central Asia...
, and UyghurUyghur , formerly known as Eastern Turk, is a Turkic language with 8 to 11 million speakers, spoken primarily by the Uyghur people in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Western China. Significant communities of Uyghur-speakers are located in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, and various other...
(Latin scriptUyghur Latin script is an auxiliary alphabet for the Uyghur language based on the Latin script. Uyghur is primarily written in a Arabic alphabet and sometimes in a Cyrillic alphabet.- Construction :...
).
- Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
: The x-convention replaces ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ with cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, and ux.
- In Hanyu Pinyin, a transcription system for Mandarin Chinese, the letter x represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/. This sound somewhat resembles [ʃ].
- In Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, x represents the sound [kʃ] in alternate spellings of words containing क्ष, especially names such as Laxmi or Madhuri DixitMadhuri Dixit is an Indian film actress who has appeared in Hindi films. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, she established herself as one of Hindi cinema's leading actresses and most accomplished dancers. She appeared in numerous commercially successful films and was recognised for several of...
.
- In Nahuatl
Nahuatl is thought to mean "a good, clear sound" This language name has several spellings, among them náhuatl , Naoatl, Nauatl, Nahuatl, Nawatl. In a back formation from the name of the language, the ethnic group of Nahuatl speakers are called Nahua...
, x represents [ʃ].
- Nguni languages: x represents the alveolar lateral click [ǁ].
- In Pashto
Pashto , known as Afghani in Persian and Pathani in Punjabi , is the native language of the indigenous Pashtun people or Afghan people who are found primarily between an area south of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan and...
, x represents [dz].
- In Pirahã
Pirahã is a language spoken by the Pirahã. The Pirahã are an indigenous people of Amazonas, Brazil, living along the Maici River, a tributary of the Amazon....
, x symbolizes the glottal stopThe glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English, the feature is represented, for example, by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those using a preservative pronunciation of...
[ʔ].
- In Vietnamese
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, x is pronounced [s]
- An illustrating example of x as a "leftover" letter is differing usage in three different East Cushitic languages
The Lowland East Cushitic languages comprise two dozen languages of the Cushitic family within Afro-Asiatic. They are spoken mainly in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, and by Cushitic groups in northern Kenya....
:
- Afar language
Afar is a Lowland East Cushitic language spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. It is believed to have 1.5 million speakers, the Afar. The basic word order in Afar, like in other East Cushitic languages, is subject–object–verb. Its speakers have a literacy rate of between one and three per cent...
: voiced alveolar implosive [ɗ]
- Oromo language
Oromo, also known as Afaan Oromo, Oromiffa, Afan Boran, Afan Orma, and sometimes in other languages by variant spellings of these names , is an Afro-Asiatic language, and the most widely spoken of the Cushitic family. Forms of Oromo are spoken as a first language by more than 25 million Oromo and...
: alveolar ejectiveThe alveolar ejective is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .-Features:Features of the aveolar ejective:-Occurrence:...
[tʼ]
- Somali language
The Somali language is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family. Its nearest relatives are Afar and Oromo. Somali is the best documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies beginning before 1900....
: voiceless pharyngeal fricativeThe voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is h-bar .-Features:Features of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative:...
[ħ]
Related letters and other similar characters
- Χ χ : Greek letter Chi
Chi is the 22nd letter of the Greek alphabet, pronounced as in English.-Greek:-Ancient Greek:Its value in Ancient Greek was an aspirated velar stop .-Koine Greek:...
: Hebrew letter Aleph* Aleph or Alef is the first letter of the Semitic abjads descended from Proto-Canaanite, Arabic alphabet, Phoenician alphabet, Hebrew alphabet, Syriac alphabet-People:*Aleph , an Italo disco artist and alias of Dave Rodgers...
- Х х : Cyrillic letter Kha
Kha or Ha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless velar fricative , like the Scottish pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "loch".Kha is romanized as ⟨kh⟩.-History:...
: GyfuGyfu is the name for the g-rune in the Anglo-Saxon rune poem, meaning "gift" or "generosity":The corresponding letter of the Gothic alphabet is g, called giba. The same rune also appears in the Elder Futhark, with a suggested Proto-Germanic name *gebô "gift". J. H...
, a letter in the Anglo-Saxon futhorcFuthorc , a runic alphabet used by the Anglo-Saxons, was descended from the Elder Futhark of 24 runes and contained between 26 and 33 characters. It was used probably from the fifth century onward, for recording Old English and Old Frisian....
runic alphabet used in pre-NormanThe Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
BritainEngland in the Middle Ages concerns the history of England during the Medieval period — from the end of Roman rule in Britain through to the Early Modern period...
.
- 乂 : a Chinese
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
character, pronounced [i] (high falling tone), "yì" in pinyinPinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: a letter representing [u] or [w] in Mandarin Phonetic Symbols : Meめ, in hiragana, or メ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both versions are written in two strokes and represent .-Stroke order:...
, a Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
katakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
character
- × : Multiplication sign
- Ⓧ : a symbol used in Japan for resale price maintenance
Resale price maintenance is the practice whereby a manufacturer and its distributors agree that the latter will sell the former's product at certain prices , at or above a price floor or at or below a price ceiling...
Computing codes
| character |
X |
x |
| Unicode name |
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER X |
LATIN SMALL LETTER X |
| character encoding |
decimal |
hex |
decimal |
hex |
UnicodeUnicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
|
88 |
0058 |
120 |
0078 |
| UTF-8 UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks...
|
88 |
58 |
120 |
78 |
| Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode...
|
X |
X |
x |
x |
| EBCDIC Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems....
family |
231 |
E7 |
167 |
A7 |
ASCIIThe American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
1 |
88 |
58 |
120 |
78 |
1 and all encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.
In the C programming language, 'x' preceded by zero (0x or 0X) is used to denote hexadecimal literal values.
See also
- XX
XX may refer to:* 20 in Roman numerals* XX chromosomes, see XY sex-determination system* XX , a fictitional organisation in XIII* Dos Equis , a brand of Mexican beer* "XX"...
- XXX
XXX may refer to:* The number 30 in Roman numerals* The year 30 AD* Games of the XXX Olympiad, the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, England* Super Bowl XXX, held on January 28, 1996* A mark indicating "extra strong"* Alcoholic beverages...
- XXXX
XXXX is a brand of Australian beer brewed in Milton, Brisbane by Queensland brewers, Castlemaine Perkins. It enjoys wide popularity in the state of Queensland, where it is commonly found on-tap in pubs and bars....
- X mark
An x mark is a mark used to indicate the concept of negation as well as affirmation...
- commonly used as a prefix term in nouns about X Window & Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...