B

Latin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

The letter B is the second letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is bee.

History

The letter B probably started as a pictogram of the floorplan of a house in Egyptian hieroglyphs or the Proto-semitic alphabet.

Egyptian hieroglyphic house	Proto-semitic house	Phoenician beth	Greek beta	Etruscan B	Roman B

By 1500 BC, the Phoenician alphabet's letter had a linear form that served as the basis for all later forms, which appeared in both the angular and more rounded forms. Its name must have corresponded closely to the Hebrew beth.

When the Ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet, they changed its name to beta and turned the letter upside-down and later added a second loop. In earlier Greek inscriptions, the letter faces to the left, but in the Greek alphabet of later times it faces to the right, although there continued to be variations between pointed and rounded loops.

The Etruscans brought the Greek alphabet to what is now Italy and left the letter unchanged. The Romans later adopted the Etruscan alphabet to write Latin, and the resulting letter, with rounded loops, has been preserved in the modern Latin alphabet used to write many languages, including English.

Typography

The modern lowercase letter b derives from later Roman times, when scribes began omitting the upper loop of the capital.

Blackletter B	Uncial B
Modern Roman B	Modern Italic B	Modern Script B

The letter B should not be confused with the visually similar German ß.

Usage

In English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the letter b denotes the voiced bilabial plosive (IPA /b/), as in bib. In English it is sometimes "silent", as in debt or comb. In medial position in Spanish it denotes the voiced bilabial fricative (IPA /β/). In Estonian, Icelandic, and in Chinese transcription, B is not voiced, but is still contrasted to P, which is a geminate /pp/ in Estonian and an aspirate /p^h/ in Chinese and Icelandic.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA, letter /b/ denotes the voiced bilabial plosive. Variants of the letter b denote related bilabial consonants, like the voiced bilabial implosive and the bilabial trill. In X-SAMPA, capital B denotes the voiced bilabial fricative.

Alternative representations

Bravo represents the letter B in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter B is DahDitDitDit: - · · ·

In Braille the letter B is represented as ⠃ (in Unicode), the dot pattern,

X.
X.
..

Computing

In Unicode the capital B is codepoint U+0042 and the lowercase b is U+0062.

The ASCII code for capital B is 66 and for lowercase b is 98; or in binary 01000010 and 01100010, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital B is 194 and for lowercase b is 130.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "B" and "b" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for B

• In medicine, B (also, B+ or B-) is one of the human blood types.
• As a prefix B indicates second rate (where A is first/top rate) e.g. B-movie, B-team.
• In chemistry, B is the symbol for the chemical element boron.
• In chess, B is a notation symbol (descriptive style) for the bishop piece.
• In the RGB color model, B stands for the color blue.
• In computer science and computing,
  • b is an abbreviation for bit, and B is an abbreviation for byte.
  • B is the name of the B programming language and the B-Method, a leading formal method.
  • <b> is the deprecated HTML tag for marking boldface type.
  • can be used to indicate a Boolean type, especially in formal specifications.
  • B is a security division ("Mandatory Protection") in the TCSEC.
• In education, B is a "good" grade, one below the top grade of A.
• In electrical engineering,
  • B is the anode (plate) power supply (originally a battery) of vacuum tube circuitry.
  • B is the symbol for susceptance, the inverse of reactance.
• In English slang, B is a euphemism for bastard or bitch.
• In finance, B is the New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol for Barnes Group Inc..
• In the North American National Hockey League, the Boston Bruins are sometimes referred to as the "Bs" because of the letter B on the front of their jerseys.
• In international licence plate codes, B stands for Belgium.
• In international paper sizes, B is a series of sizes with an aspect ratio of roughly 70% width to height. The B series is a scaled version of the A series.
• In mathematics,
  • B is often used as a digit meaning eleven in hexadecimal and other positional numeral systems with a radix of 12 or greater.
  • in Blackboard bold notation represents Ball (mathematics).
  • B may denote Brun's constant, which equals 1.902160583104.
• In music,
  • B is a note.
  • B, or "B-side", is the second or reverse side of a vinyl record; also called the flip side.
• In photography, B is a shutter speed.
• In physics,
  • The vector B represents the magnetic field.
  • The symbol B stands for the unit bel.
  • The bottom quark is represented with small "b", the B meson is represented with capital "B".
• As the first letter of a postal code,
  • In Canada, B stands for Nova Scotia.
  • In the United Kingdom, B stands for Birmingham.
• In radiocommunication, B is the ITU prefix allocated to China.
• In rail transport, B is the UIC classification for the locomotive wheel arrangement known as 0-4-0 in the Whyte notation; a locomotive with two powered axles (and thus four wheels) in which the axles are linked by gearing or side rods.
• In nutrition, B is a vitamin.
• In the diaries of Edwina Currie, B was the code name for John Major with whom the author was having an affair.
• B (followed by a -) is the ICAO prefix for civil aircraft registered in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

B

• В : Ve (Cyrillic)