• third letter of the Latin alphabet, second consonant
  • phonetic names: 1) "voiceless velar plosive" (hard); sound: press your tongue against your velum and release to create a short percussive sound, 2) "voiceless alveolar sibilant" (soft); sound: hiss like a snake
  • in Egyptian, four hieroglyphs pronounced similar to 'C': a cup, a water basin, a folded cloth, and a lock
  • in Phoenician/Hebrew, started as letter as 'G' (gimel), meaning camel (or possibly "throwing stick"?)
  • adopted by Greeks as 'k' or gamma: Γ (upper case), ɣ (lower case) considered hard (as in "car") or soft when followed by an e, i, or y (as in "cent")
  • let's not forget the mnemonic device: "I before E except after C"
  • also considered soft when substituted with a cedilla (ç) - common in Turkish, French and Portuguese (among other languages)
  • first example where upper and lower case character are almost identical
  • associated with openness, the cosmos and circles
  • represented as an inscribed in a circle open to the right side, symbolically toward what is to come
  • can be seen as a hatched egg ('A' was beginnings/energy, 'B' was in a house/beth, 'C' has been liberated!)
  • also corresponds to an open mouth (like that of newborn)
  • 'C' is often employed for marketing and advertising, its incomplete circle suggesting attraction or advancement, a sideways smile (ie. Coca-Cola)
  • in a monk's medieval language chart, 'C' is associated with the word plenitudo, which refers to humanity's complete development
  • in Roman, 'C' represents 100; with a line over it, 'C' becomes 100,000
  • C-note is a one hundred dollar bill
  • 'C' represents the element carbon (#6 on the periodic table); the building block of all life forms
  • 'C' is considered the average grade in education
  • 'C' in music is the note "do", the first note in a C-major musical scale
  • C-clef in music indicates the location of middle C on a musical staff
  • 'C' with a vertical strikethrough equal cent (¢); in mathematics, it refers to complex numbers (ℂ)
  • 'C' represents temperature scale Celsius (°C) named after the Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius (1701–1744)
  • 'C' in a circle represent the copyright symbol (©); alternately, a backwards 'C' in a circle represents the copyleft symbol
  • in printing, C stands for cyan (CMYK)
  • in the common formula E=mc², 'C' stands for celeritas, Latin for velocity
  • C can also abbreviate cent, century, chapter, circa, contralto, Cuba, cubic, cycle
  • phonetic sound "see" can represent common verb (to see), a large body of salt water (sea) or "yes" in Spanish (si)
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: CHARLIE
  • Vitamin C (aka ascorbic acid), a vitamin found in citrus fruits and green vegetables, is essential in maintaining healthy connective tissue, and is also thought to act as an antioxidant
  • because of it phonetic anomalies and quirks, 'C' has been criticized (and nearly eliminated!) through its history. Playwright Ben Johnson's words about "C": "A letter which our fore-fathers might very well have spar'd in our tongue."
  • C-ration was an individual canned, pre-cooked or prepared food issued U.S. military land forces (versus A-ration, which was fresh food, and B-ration, which was packaged unprepared food)
  • "C is the crescent, the moon." -Victor Hugo, French poet & playwright