Alpha /ˈælfə/ (uppercase Α, lowercase α) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph 
Uses
Greek
In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced [a] and could be either phonemically long ([aː]) or short ([a]). Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: Ᾱᾱ, Ᾰᾰ.
- ὥρα = ὥρᾱ hōrā Greek pronunciation: [hɔ́ːraː] "a time"
- γλῶσσα = γλῶσσᾰ glôssa Greek pronunciation: [ɡlɔ̂ːssa] "tongue"
In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel IPA: [a].
In the polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (ά, ὰ, ᾶ), and either of two breathing marks (ἁ, ἀ), as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript (ᾳ).
Greek grammar
In the Attic–Ionic dialect of Ancient Greek, long alpha [aː] fronted to [ɛː] (eta). In Ionic, the shift took place in all positions. In Attic, the shift did not take place after epsilon, iota, and rho (ε, ι, ρ; e, i, r). In Doric and Aeolic, long alpha is preserved in all positions.
- Doric, Aeolic, Attic χώρᾱ chṓrā – Ionic χώρη chṓrē, "country"
- Doric, Aeolic φᾱ́μᾱ phā́mā – Attic, Ionic φήμη phḗmē, "report"
Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix ἀ- or ἀν- a-, an-, added to words to negate them. It originates from the Proto-Indo-European *n̥- (syllabic nasal) and is cognate with English un-.
Copulative a is the Greek prefix ἁ- or ἀ- ha-, a-. It comes from Proto-Indo-European *sm̥.
Mathematics and science
The letter alpha represents various concepts in physics and chemistry, including alpha radiation, angular acceleration, alpha particles, alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction (as fine-structure constant). Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a compound in physical chemistry. In ethology, it is used to name the dominant individual in a group of animals. In aerodynamics, the letter is used as a symbol for the angle of attack of an aircraft and the word "alpha" is used as a synonym for this property.
In mathematics, the letter alpha is used to denote the area underneath a normal curve in statistics to denote significance level when proving null and alternative hypotheses. It is also commonly used in algebraic solutions representing quantities such as angles. In mathematical logic, α is sometimes used as a placeholder for ordinal numbers. It is used for Stoneham numbers.
Most occurrences of alpha in science are the lowercase alpha. The uppercase letter alpha is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase Latin A.
The proportionality operator "∝" (in Unicode: U+221D) is sometimes mistaken for alpha.
International Phonetic Alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the letter ɑ, which looks similar to the lower-case alpha, represents the open back unrounded vowel.
History and symbolism
This section needs additional citations for verification. (June 2021) |
Origin
The Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek in the early 8th century BC, perhaps in Euboea. The majority of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were adopted into Greek with much the same sounds as they had had in Phoenician, but ʼāleph, the Phoenician letter representing the glottal stop [ʔ], was adopted as representing the vowel [a]; similarly, hē [h] and ʽayin [ʕ] are Phoenician consonants that became Greek vowels, epsilon [e] and omicron [o], respectively.
Plutarch
Plutarch, in Moralia, presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet. Ammonius asks Plutarch what he, being a Boeotian, has to say for Cadmus, the Phoenician who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece, placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for ox—which, unlike Hesiod, the Phoenicians considered not the second or third, but the first of all necessities. "Nothing at all," Plutarch replied. He then added that he would rather be assisted by Lamprias, his own grandfather, than by Dionysus' grandfather, i.e. Cadmus. For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is "alpha", because it is very plain and simple—the air coming off the mouth does not require any motion of the tongue—and therefore this is the first sound that children make.
According to Plutarch's natural order of attribution of the vowels to the planets, alpha was connected with the Moon.
Alpha and Omega
As the first letter of the alphabet, Alpha as a Greek numeral came to represent the number 1. Therefore, Alpha, both as a symbol and term, is used to refer to the "first", or "primary", or "principal" (most significant) occurrence or status of a thing.
The New Testament has God declaring himself to be the "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." (Revelation 22:13, KJV, and see also 1:8).
Consequently, the term "alpha" has also come to be used to denote "primary" position in social hierarchy, examples being the concept of dominant "alpha" members in groups of animals.
Unicode
All code points with ALPHA or ALFA but without WITH (for accented Greek characters, see Greek diacritics: Computer encoding):
- U+0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA
- U+0252 ɒ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA
- U+0386 Ά GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS
- U+0391 Α GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA (Α)
- U+03AC ά GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS
- U+03B1 α GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA (α)
- U+1D45 ᵅ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ALPHA
- U+1D90 ᶐ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
- U+1D9B ᶛ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED ALPHA
- U+1DE7 ◌ᷧ COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA
- U+2376 ⍶ APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA UNDERBAR
- U+237A ⍺ APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA
- U+2C6D Ɑ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA
- U+2C70 Ɒ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED ALPHA
- U+2C80 Ⲁ COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER ALFA
- U+2C81 ⲁ COPTIC SMALL LETTER ALFA
- U+AB30 ꬰ LATIN SMALL LETTER BARRED ALPHA
- U+AB64 ꭤ LATIN SMALL LETTER INVERTED ALPHA
- U+1D6A8 𝚨 MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL ALPHA
- U+1D6C2 𝛂 MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL ALPHA
- U+1D6E2 𝛢 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA
- U+1D6FC 𝛼 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL ALPHA
- U+1D71C 𝜜 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA
- U+1D736 𝜶 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC SMALL ALPHA
- U+1D756 𝝖 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD CAPITAL ALPHA
- U+1D770 𝝰 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD SMALL ALPHA
- U+1D790 𝞐 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA
- U+1D7AA 𝞪 MATHEMATICAL SANS-SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL ALPHA
Notes
- Ancient Greek: ἄλφα, álpha, or Greek: άλφα, romanized: álfa
- The MATHEMATICAL symbols are only to be used in math. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate text style.
References
- "alpha". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
- Brookes, I. (2004). Chamber Concise Dictionary. Allied Pub (p) Limited. p. 30. ISBN 978-81-86062-36-4. Archived from the original on 11 June 2022. Retrieved 15 November 2021.
- Herbert Weir Smyth. Greek grammar for colleges. paragraph 30 Archived 20 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine and note Archived 13 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
- "Chapter 5: Analysing the Data Part II : Inferential Statistics". Research Methods and Statistics PESS202 Lecture and Commentary Notes. Archived from the original on 22 August 2011.
- Weisstein, Eric W. "Stoneham Number". mathworld.wolfram.com. Retrieved 31 January 2025.
- The date of the earliest inscribed objects; A.W. Johnston, "The alphabet", in N. Stampolidis and V. Karageorghis, eds, Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva: Interconnections in the Mediterranean 2003:263-76, summarizes the present scholarship on the dating.
- Symposiacs, Book IX, questions II & III On-line text Archived 13 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine at Adelaide library
- Hesiod, in Works and Days (see on Perseus Project Archived 17 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine), advises the early Greek farmers, "First of all, get a house, then a woman and third, an ox for the plough."
- "Character Encodings". Archived from the original on 1 August 2019. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
Alpha ˈ ae l f e uppercase A lowercase a is the first letter of the Greek alphabet In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of one Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph which is the West Semitic word for ox Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter A UsesGreek In Ancient Greek alpha was pronounced a and could be either phonemically long aː or short a Where there is ambiguity long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today Ᾱᾱ Ᾰᾰ ὥra ὥrᾱ hōra Greek pronunciation hɔ ːraː a time glῶssa glῶssᾰ glossa Greek pronunciation ɡlɔ ːssa tongue In Modern Greek vowel length has been lost and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel IPA a In the polytonic orthography of Greek alpha like other vowel letters can occur with several diacritic marks any of three accent symbols a ὰ ᾶ and either of two breathing marks ἁ ἀ as well as combinations of these It can also combine with the iota subscript ᾳ Greek grammar In the Attic Ionic dialect of Ancient Greek long alpha aː fronted to ɛː eta In Ionic the shift took place in all positions In Attic the shift did not take place after epsilon iota and rho e i r e i r In Doric and Aeolic long alpha is preserved in all positions Doric Aeolic Attic xwrᾱ chṓra Ionic xwrh chṓre country Doric Aeolic fᾱ mᾱ pha ma Attic Ionic fhmh phḗme report Privative a is the Ancient Greek prefix ἀ or ἀn a an added to words to negate them It originates from the Proto Indo European n syllabic nasal and is cognate with English un Copulative a is the Greek prefix ἁ or ἀ ha a It comes from Proto Indo European sm Mathematics and science The letter alpha represents various concepts in physics and chemistry including alpha radiation angular acceleration alpha particles alpha carbon and strength of electromagnetic interaction as fine structure constant Alpha also stands for thermal expansion coefficient of a compound in physical chemistry In ethology it is used to name the dominant individual in a group of animals In aerodynamics the letter is used as a symbol for the angle of attack of an aircraft and the word alpha is used as a synonym for this property In mathematics the letter alpha is used to denote the area underneath a normal curve in statistics to denote significance level when proving null and alternative hypotheses It is also commonly used in algebraic solutions representing quantities such as angles In mathematical logic a is sometimes used as a placeholder for ordinal numbers It is used for Stoneham numbers Most occurrences of alpha in science are the lowercase alpha The uppercase letter alpha is not generally used as a symbol because it tends to be rendered identically to the uppercase Latin A The proportionality operator in Unicode U 221D is sometimes mistaken for alpha International Phonetic Alphabet In the International Phonetic Alphabet the letter ɑ which looks similar to the lower case alpha represents the open back unrounded vowel History and symbolismThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section Unsourced material may be challenged and removed June 2021 Learn how and when to remove this message Origin The Phoenician alphabet was adopted for Greek in the early 8th century BC perhaps in Euboea The majority of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet were adopted into Greek with much the same sounds as they had had in Phoenician but ʼaleph the Phoenician letter representing the glottal stop ʔ was adopted as representing the vowel a similarly he h and ʽayin ʕ are Phoenician consonants that became Greek vowels epsilon e and omicron o respectively Plutarch Plutarch in Moralia presents a discussion on why the letter alpha stands first in the alphabet Ammonius asks Plutarch what he being a Boeotian has to say for Cadmus the Phoenician who reputedly settled in Thebes and introduced the alphabet to Greece placing alpha first because it is the Phoenician name for ox which unlike Hesiod the Phoenicians considered not the second or third but the first of all necessities Nothing at all Plutarch replied He then added that he would rather be assisted by Lamprias his own grandfather than by Dionysus grandfather i e Cadmus For Lamprias had said that the first articulate sound made is alpha because it is very plain and simple the air coming off the mouth does not require any motion of the tongue and therefore this is the first sound that children make According to Plutarch s natural order of attribution of the vowels to the planets alpha was connected with the Moon Alpha and Omega Stained glass featuring Alpha and Omega in the de As the first letter of the alphabet Alpha as a Greek numeral came to represent the number 1 Therefore Alpha both as a symbol and term is used to refer to the first or primary or principal most significant occurrence or status of a thing The New Testament has God declaring himself to be the Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end the first and the last Revelation 22 13 KJV and see also 1 8 Consequently the term alpha has also come to be used to denote primary position in social hierarchy examples being the concept of dominant alpha members in groups of animals UnicodeAll code points with ALPHA or ALFA but without WITH for accented Greek characters see Greek diacritics Computer encoding U 0251 ɑ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA U 0252 ɒ LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA U 0386 A GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS U 0391 A GREEK CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA amp Alpha U 03AC a GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH TONOS U 03B1 a GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA amp alpha U 1D45 ᵅ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL ALPHA U 1D90 ᶐ LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH RETROFLEX HOOK U 1D9B ᶛ MODIFIER LETTER SMALL TURNED ALPHA U 1DE7 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA U 2376 APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA UNDERBAR U 237A APL FUNCTIONAL SYMBOL ALPHA U 2C6D Ɑ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ALPHA U 2C70 Ɒ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TURNED ALPHA U 2C80 Ⲁ COPTIC CAPITAL LETTER ALFA U 2C81 ⲁ COPTIC SMALL LETTER ALFA U AB30 ꬰ LATIN SMALL LETTER BARRED ALPHA U AB64 ꭤ LATIN SMALL LETTER INVERTED ALPHA U 1D6A8 𝚨 MATHEMATICAL BOLD CAPITAL ALPHA U 1D6C2 𝛂 MATHEMATICAL BOLD SMALL ALPHA U 1D6E2 𝛢 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA U 1D6FC 𝛼 MATHEMATICAL ITALIC SMALL ALPHA U 1D71C 𝜜 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA U 1D736 𝜶 MATHEMATICAL BOLD ITALIC SMALL ALPHA U 1D756 𝝖 MATHEMATICAL SANS SERIF BOLD CAPITAL ALPHA U 1D770 𝝰 MATHEMATICAL SANS SERIF BOLD SMALL ALPHA U 1D790 𝞐 MATHEMATICAL SANS SERIF BOLD ITALIC CAPITAL ALPHA U 1D7AA 𝞪 MATHEMATICAL SANS SERIF BOLD ITALIC SMALL ALPHANotesAncient Greek ἄlfa alpha or Greek alfa romanized alfa The MATHEMATICAL symbols are only to be used in math Stylized Greek text should be encoded using normal Greek letters with markup and formatting to indicate text style ReferencesLook up A or a in Wiktionary the free dictionary Wikisource has the text of the 1897 Easton s Bible Dictionary article A letter alpha Oxford English Dictionary Online ed Oxford University Press Subscription or participating institution membership required Brookes I 2004 Chamber Concise Dictionary Allied Pub p Limited p 30 ISBN 978 81 86062 36 4 Archived from the original on 11 June 2022 Retrieved 15 November 2021 Herbert Weir Smyth Greek grammar for colleges paragraph 30 Archived 20 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine and note Archived 13 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Chapter 5 Analysing the Data Part II Inferential Statistics Research Methods and Statistics PESS202 Lecture and Commentary Notes Archived from the original on 22 August 2011 Weisstein Eric W Stoneham Number mathworld wolfram com Retrieved 31 January 2025 The date of the earliest inscribed objects A W Johnston The alphabet in N Stampolidis and V Karageorghis eds Sea Routes from Sidon to Huelva Interconnections in the Mediterranean 2003 263 76 summarizes the present scholarship on the dating Symposiacs Book IX questions II amp III On line text Archived 13 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine at Adelaide library Hesiod in Works and Days see on Perseus Project Archived 17 January 2021 at the Wayback Machine advises the early Greek farmers First of all get a house then a woman and third an ox for the plough Character Encodings Archived from the original on 1 August 2019 Retrieved 14 January 2013
