P
pronunciation
How to pronounce P in British English:
UK [pi:]
How to pronounce P in American English:
US [pi]
-
- Noun:
- a multivalent nonmetallic element of the nitrogen family that occurs commonly in inorganic phosphate rocks and as organic phosphates in all living cells; is highly reactive and occurs in several allotropic forms
- the 16th letter of the Roman alphabet
Word Origin
- P
- a rare letter in the initial position in Germanic, in part because by Grimm's Law PIE p- became Germanic f-; even with the early Latin borrowings in Old English, -p- takes up a little over 4 pages in J.R. Clark Hall's "Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary," compared to 31 pages for B and more than 36 for F. But it now is the third-most-common initial letter in the English vocabulary, and with C and S comprises nearly a third of the dictionary, a testimony to the flood of words that have entered the language since 1066 from Latin, Greek, and French. To mind one's Ps and Qs (1779), possibly is from confusion of these letters among children learning to write. Another theory traces it to old-time tavern-keepers tracking their patrons' bar tabs in pints and quarts. But see also to be P and Q (1610s), "to be excellent," a slang phrase said to derive from prime quality.
Example
- 1. Icap and r p martin representatives declined to comment .
- 2. P 4 s 3 also ignites easily by friction .
- 3. Show-goers try sony 's new vaio p series 8-inch notebooks .
- 4. But " p versus np " is more than just an abstract mathematical puzzle .
- 5. A resolution of the p v np problem could therefore have significant real-world repercussions .