B

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

The Universal Character Set

Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER B
Basic Latin	U+0042

Contents 1 Translingual 1.1 Etymology 1 1.1.1 Letter 1.1.1.1 Usage notes 1.1.1.2 See also 1.2 Etymology 2 1.2.1 Symbol 1.3 See also 2 English 2.1 Pronunciation 2.2 Etymology 1 2.2.1 Letter 2.2.2 Usage notes 2.2.3 See also 2.3 Etymology 2 2.3.1 Abbreviation 2.4 Etymology 3 2.4.1 Noun 2.4.1.1 Translations 2.4.2 Usage notes 3 American Sign Language 3.1 Alternative forms 3.2 Etymology 3.3 Production 3.4 Letter 3.5 See also 4 Czech 4.1 Pronunciation 4.2 Letter 5 Dutch 5.1 Pronunciation 5.2 Letter 5.3 See also 6 Esperanto 6.1 Pronunciation 6.2 Letter 6.3 See also 7 Finnish 7.1 Noun 8 Italian 8.1 Pronunciation 8.2 Noun 9 Romanian 9.1 Pronunciation 9.2 Letter 9.2.1 See also 10 Slovene 10.1 Pronunciation 10.2 Letter 11 Spanish 11.1 Letter

[edit] Translingual

[edit] Etymology 1

From Ancient Greek letter Β (B), “‘Beta’”).

[edit] Letter

B upper case (lower case b)

1. The second letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.

[edit] Usage notes

The letter B (usually its lower case form b) is used in several romanization systems of non-Latin scripts to represent the bilabial plosive or stop, usually voiced (IPA: /b/).

[edit] See also

• (Latin script):  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
• (Variations of letter B):  Ḃḃ  Ḅḅ  Ḇḇ  Ƀƀ  Ɓɓ  Ƃƃ  ᵬ  ᶀ  ʙ  Ｂｂ  ȸ
• For more variations, see Appendix:Variations of "b".
• (other scripts) Β (B, “‘Beta’”), Б (B, “‘Be’”), В (V, “‘Ve’”), ב (b, “‘beth’”), ㅂ (b, “‘bieup’”), ㄅ (b, “‘bāo’”)

[edit] Etymology 2

• (blood type): from antigen B
• (symbol for boron): abbreviation of boron
• (hexadecimal 11): The eleventh item from the sequence {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F}

[edit] Symbol

B

1. A blood type that has a specific antigen that aggravates the immune response in people with type A antigen in their blood. They can receive blood from type B or type O, but cannot receive blood from AB or A.
2. (chemistry) The symbol for boron.
3. (computing) Hexadecimal symbol for 11.
4. (biochemistry) IUPAC 1-letter abbreviation for either glutamine or glutamic acid

[edit] See also

• B on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Other representations of B:

NATO phonetic: Bravo Morse code: –··· Braille: ⠃ ASL Manual: B

Signal flag:

Semaphore:

Letter styles

Capital and lowercase versions of B, in normal and italic type

Uppercase and lowercase B in Fraktur

B in uncial script

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[edit] English

[edit] Pronunciation

• (phoneme) IPA: /b/, SAMPA: /b/
• (letter name) IPA: /biː/, SAMPA: /bi:/
•  Audio (UK)^{help, file}

  Rhymes: -iː

[edit] Etymology 1

Old English letter B, from 7th century replacement by Latin B of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc letter ᛒ (B), “‘beorc’”).

[edit] Letter

B (upper case, lower case b, plural Bs)

1. The letter Bee, the second letter of the English alphabet.

[edit] Usage notes

In Modern English, the letter B is sometimes silent, e.g. in climb, and debt.

Apostrophes are sometimes used to form plurals of single upper case letters, especially at the start of a sentence:

A’s are difficult to achieve in this class.

Usually, though, the apostrophe is avoided when there is no risk of confusion:

She gets straight As in school.

[edit] See also

• Previous letter: A
• Next letter: C

[edit] Etymology 2

• (cricket, balls): abbreviation of balls
• (billion): abbreviation of billion
• (black): abbreviation of black

[edit] Abbreviation

B

1. (cricket) the number of balls faced by a batsman
2. The quantity one billion (1,000,000,000), usually used to signify a sum of money

   $2.8 B — “two point eight billion dollars” (i.e., $2,800,000,000)

3. (British) The grade of pencil that makes darker marks than grade HB but lighter marks than grade 2B; a pencil with soft lead.

[edit] Etymology 3

• (personality type): from contrast with the letter ‘A’ and its corresponding personality type
• (academic grade): from the position of the letter ‘B’ in the English alphabet

[edit] Noun

B (plural Bs)

1. A personality type of someone who is relaxed and easygoing and able to engage in leisure activities without worrying about work.
2. An academic grade, better than a C and worse than an A
3. Signifies a second-tier or second class of a given commodity, group, or category, as in B-movie, B-list, etc.

   The television studio revived some of it's B characters for the spinoff.

4. (music) The seventh note in the C major scale.

[edit] Translations

[edit] Usage notes

Apostrophes are sometimes used to form plurals of single upper case letters, especially at the start of a sentence:

A’s are difficult to achieve in this class.

Usually, though, the apostrophe is avoided when there is no risk of confusion:

She gets straight As in school.

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[edit] American Sign Language

[edit] Alternative forms

• (thumb unopposed and flat against the radial edge of the palm, used in rapid fingerspelling of words like B-A-B-Y) FlatB

[edit] Etymology

From French Sign Language sign for the letter B.

[edit] Production

This one-handed ASL sign is produced as follows:

• Posture the dominant hand in the “B” handshape .

[edit] Letter

(Stokoe B)

1. The letter B

[edit] See also

• Index:American Sign Language/B

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[edit] Czech

[edit] Pronunciation

• IPA: /be:/

[edit] Letter

B

1. B (the 2nd letter in the Czech alphabet)
2. (music): B flat

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[edit] Dutch

[edit] Pronunciation

• IPA: /beː/

[edit] Letter

B (capital, lowercase b)

1. The second letter of the Dutch alphabet.

[edit] See also

• Previous letter: A
• Next letter: C

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[edit] Esperanto

[edit] Pronunciation

• (letter name): IPA: /bo/
• (phoneme): IPA: /b/

[edit] Letter

B (upper case, lower case b)

1. The second letter of the Esperanto alphabet.

[edit] See also

• Previous letter: A
• Next letter: C

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[edit] Finnish

[edit] Noun

B

1. lubenter approbatur

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[edit] Italian

[edit] Pronunciation

• IPA: /bi/, SAMPA: /bi/

[edit] Noun

Wikipedia ^it

B m. and f. inv.

1. The second letter of the Italian, and of the Latin alphabets

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[edit] Romanian

[edit] Pronunciation

• (phoneme) IPA: /b/
• (letter name) IPA: /be/

[edit] Letter

B (upper case, lower case b)

1. The letter Be, the fourth letter of the Romanian alphabet.

[edit] See also

• Previous letter: Â
• Next letter: C

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[edit] Slovene

Wikipedia ^sl

[edit] Pronunciation

[edit] Letter

B (capital, lowercase b)

1. The second letter of the Slovene alphabet. Preceded by A and followed by C.

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[edit] Spanish

[edit] Letter

B (upper case, lower case b)

1. The second letter of the Spanish alphabet.