Look up D or d in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Basic Latin alphabet
	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

D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English (pronounced /diː/) is spelled dee, plural dees.^[1]

History

Egyptian hieroglyph d	Proto-Semitic Dal, Daleth	Phoenician Daleth	Etruscan D	Greek Delta	Roman D

The Semitic letter Dâlet probably developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter was pronounced /d/; in the Etruscan alphabet the letter was superfluous but still retained (see letter B). Greek letter: Δ (capital) or δ (small) (Delta).^{[citation needed]}

The minuscule (lower-case) form of D consists of a loop and a tall vertical stroke. It developed by gradual variations on the majuscule (capital) form. In handwriting, it was common to start the arc to the left of the vertical stroke, resulting in a serif at the top of the arc. This serif was extended while the rest of the letter was reduced, resulting in an angled stroke and loop. The angled stroke slowly developed into a vertical stroke.

Usage

In most languages using the Latin alphabet, the letter d represents the sound /d/, but in the Vietnamese alphabet it represents the sound /z/ in the north and /j/ in the south. At the end of German words, d represents /t/. In Fijian it stands for the prenasalized stop /nd/. In some languages where voiceless unaspirated stops contrast with voiceless aspirated stops, d represents an unaspirated /t/, while t represents an aspirated /tʰ/. Examples of such languages include Icelandic, Scottish Gaelic, Navajo, and the Pinyin transliteration of Mandarin.

Representations

Alternative representations of D

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Delta	–··

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	Braille

In Unicode the capital D is codepoint U+0044 and the lower case d is U+0064.

The ASCII code for capital D is 68 and for lower case d is 100; or in binary 01000100 and 01100100, respectively.

The EBCDIC code for capital D is 196 and for lowercase d is 132.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "D" and "d" for upper and lower case, respectively.

In British Sign Language (BSL), the letter 'd' is represented as right hand held with index and thumb extended and slightly curved and tip of thumb and finger held against extended index of left hand.

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: D

• Eth (Ð, ð)
• D with stroke (Đ, đ)
• Hooked D (Ɗ, ɗ)
• Д, д - De (Cyrillic)
• , ∂ (the partial derivative symbol; "der")

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007)