P

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P 16th letter of the English alphabet and a letter employed in the alphabets of other w European languages. It is a consonant and descends from the Semitic letter pe, a word meaning “mouth”. The letter was modified in shape by the Greeks and taken into their alphabet as pi. The Romans changed the letter's shape further by shortening its right-hand vertical and later curving it to give it the form it has today. In English p normally functions as what phoneticians call a voiceless bilabial plosive or stop consonant, made by allowing the breath to build up behind closed lips to be released sharply as the lips are drawn apart. It is the voiceless counterpart of b. The letter is nearly always sounded, as in pig and top, although it is “silent” in a few Greek-derived words, such as psychology or pneumatic, and in the pseudo-Greek spelling ptarmigan. Combined with h it is pronounced like an f, as in phase and epitaph.

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