Translingual

Symbol

S

1. (chemistry) symbol for sulfur / sulphur
2. (metrology) symbol for siemens, a measure of electrical conductance.
3. (metrology) symbol for spat.
4. (metrology) symbol for svedberg (unit of sedimentation rate in ultracentrifugation).
5. (biochemistry) IUPAC 1-letter abbreviation for serine

S is the nineteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /ɛs/) is spelled ess, or usually es- when part of a compound word; the plural is esses.

History

Semitic Šîn ("teeth") represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in ship). Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma (Σ) came to represent /s/. In Etruscan and Latin, the /s/ value was maintained, and only in modern languages has the letter been used to represent other sounds.

An alternative form of the minuscule 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. For example, "sinfulness" is rendered as "ſinfulneſs" using the long s. The use of the long s died out by the beginning of the 19th century, largely to prevent confusion with the lower case f. The ligature of ſs (or ſz) became the German ess-tsett, ß.