The eleventh letter of the Latin alphabet, K comes from the Greek &Kappa or &kappa (Kappa) developed from the Semitic Kap, symbol for an open hand.
The Semitic sound value /k/ was maintained in most Classic as well as Modern Languages, although Latin abandoned K almost completely, preferring C.
Therefore, the Romance languages have K only in foreign words.
Kilo represents the letter K in the NATO phonetic alphabet.
K is also:
- As k, kilo, an SI prefix meaning 103 = 1,000 (one thousand) or K, a binary prefix used in computing to mean 210 = 1,024.
- The symbol for kelvin (K) in the SI system
- In chemistry, a symbol for the element potassium (from its latin name kalium)
- An abbreviation for ketamine
- In the Library of Congress classification, the designation for books about law
- The stock symbol for Kellogg Company
- In baseball, the abbreviation for strikeout
- In Hong Kong, from 2002-now, the informal abbreviation for karaoke.
- The simplest system of modal logic (K stands for Kripke).
Note that k as in kilo (SI) is lowercased, whereas K as in kelvin or kilo (computing) is uppercased.
Two-letter combinations starting with K:
