S

S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Semitic Šîn (bow) was pronounced as /S/ as the modern English digraph SH. In Greek, there was only one phoneme /s/ and no /S/, so Greek σιγμα (sigma) came to represent the Greek /s/ phoneme. The name "sigma" probably comes from the Semitic letter "Sâmek" and not "Šîn". In Etruscan and Latin, the /s/ value was maintained, and only in modern languages, S came to represent other sounds, like /S/ in Hungarian or /z/ in English, French and German (in English rise; in French lisez, "read! (imperative pl.)"; in German lesen "to read"). An archaic alternative form of s, ſ, called the long s or medial s, was used at the beginning or in the middle of the word; the modern form, the short or terminal s, was used at the end of the word. The ligature of ſs became the German ess-tsett ( ß ). Sierra represents the letter S in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Meanings for S

\n* In biochemistry, S is the symbol for serine.\n* In calendars, S is often the abbreviation for Saturday or Sunday, or the month September. When it is necessary to disambiguate, U is sometimes used for "Sunday" to avoid confusing it with "Saturday".\n* In chemistry, S is the symbol for sulfur.\n* In computing, <s> is the HTML tag to create strike-through text.\n* In education, S is a satisfactory grade.\n* In financial securities, S is the stock symbol for Sears, Roebuck and Co\n* In international licence plate codes, S stands for Sweden.\n* In mathematics, blackboard bold represents the sedenions.\n* In the Metric system,\n** S is the symbol for siemens, the SI derived unit for electric conductance.\n** s is the symbol for the second, the SI base unit for time.\n* In physics, S is the symbol for the unit Svedberg. See also: ß, ſ, Š, Ŝ, Ş, dollar Two-letter combinations starting with S:\n*sa sb sc sd se sf sg sh si sj sk sl sm sn so sp sq sr ss st su sv sw sx sy sz