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O, or o, is the fifteenth letter and the fourth vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is o (pronounced ), plural oes."O" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); Chambers-Happap, "oes" op. cit. Oes is the plural of the name of the letter. The plural of the letter itself is rendered Os, O's, os, o's.
Its graphic form has remained fairly constant from Phoenician times until today. The name of the Phoenician letter was Ayin, meaning "eye", and its shape originates simply as a drawing of a human eye (possibly inspired by the corresponding Egyptian hieroglyph, Proto-Sinaitic script). Its original sound value was that of a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the cognate Arabic alphabet ع ʿayn.
The use of this Phoenician letter for a vowel sound is due to the early , which adopted the letter "omicron" to represent the vowel . The letter was adopted with the value in the Old Italic alphabets, including the early Latin alphabet. In Greek, a variation of the form later came to differentiate this long sound (omega, meaning "large O") from the short o (Omicron, meaning "small o"). The Greek omicron gave rise to the corresponding Cyrillic letter O.
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Common digraphs include , which represents either or ; or , which typically represents the diphthong , and , , and which represent a variety of pronunciations depending on context and etymology.
In other contexts, especially before a letter with a minim, may represent the sound , as in 'son' or 'love'. It can also represent the semivowel , as in choir or quinoa.
"O" in isolation is a word, also spelled "oh" and pronounced . Before a noun, usually capitalized, it indicates direct address (the vocative case), as in the titles "O Canada" or "O Captain! My Captain!" or in certain verses of the Bible.
is commonly associated with the open-mid back rounded vowel , mid back rounded vowel or close-mid back rounded vowel in many languages. Other languages use for various values, usually back vowels which are at least partly open. Derived letters such as and have been created for the alphabets of some languages to distinguish values that were not present in Latin and Greek, particularly rounded front vowels.
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