• twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet, ninth consonant
  • phonetic name: "alveolar lateral approximant"; sound: place your tongue on your alveolar ridge and vocalize, allowing air to pass through the sides (n.b.: if you relax your tongue, the sound becomes an 'R'...)
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs were a lion and a mouth
  • adopted by Semites as lamed (a goad, which is a guiding device used to herd cattle, like a shepherd's staff) - as such, it imparted discipline, instruction and education
  • Greeks adopted it as their letter lambda (Λ upper case, λ lower case)
  • Λ was rotated 180 degrees by the Romans in 200 BCE, becoming the L we know today
  • in Roman, 'L' represents 50
  • associated with liquid, square and softness
  • square shape of 'L', with its perfect 90 degree angle, symbolizes rigor, instruction and rectitude
  • lowercase 'l' is generally written as a single vertical line, which can often be confused with uppercase 'I', as well as numeral '1', especially with sans serifs fonts (think about the word 'Ill') - sometimes the lowercase 'l' has an additional spur at the baseline
  • lowercase 'l' was only finalized in ink in the 1400s, making it the last lowercase character to enter the alphabet
  • double 'l' (ll) is a letter in the Spanish alphabet
  • a handful of english words have double ll at the beginning: Lloyd, llama, etc.
  • 'L' can be silent, as in 'should,' 'walk,' etc. Words like 'palm' can be pronounced with or without the 'L'.
  • phonetically, 'L' conveys roundness; calm, soft, light, flux, childishness, slipperiness, departure or gradual release/surrender; 'L' is found in words like liquid, float, flow, fluid, lick, lull, lullaby (n.b.: "cellar door" is considered by some [including J.R.R. Tolkien] to be particularly pleasing to the ear)
  • "It melteth in the sounding, and is therefore called a liquid." - Ben Jonson, English Grammar, 1640
  • 'L' is also associated with divinity, often found in the names of angels (Gabriel, Daniel, Raphael, etc.) - also, 'L' gives "Alleluia" life
  • 'L' in liquid measurement is litre
  • 'lb' in solid measurement is pound, from the latin word libre meaning "scales, balance"
  • £ in currency stands for the British pound sterling
  • 'L' ( or l or ℓ) in mathematics is length (of a line)
  • 'L' in electronics is inductance, similar to inertia
  • 'L' in physics is the Langrarian (kinetic potential), or Luminosity, the measurement of brightness
  • 'L' in mathematics is Gödel's constructible universe
  • 'L' in chemistry is Leucine, an amino acid
  • uppercase 'L' is longitude; lowercase 'l' is latitude
  • 'L' in literature is a novel by Erlend Loe
  • L bar is a steel beam with a L-shaped cross section
  • L block is an L-shaped concrete building block
  • L pipe (aka "ell") is a pipe bent and shaped to a 90 degree angle
  • L square is a L-shaped carpenter's ruler
  • L band is a radio frequency range
  • L can also refer to the left direction
  • in the 20th century, lambda (λ) became a scientific symbol for wavelength (ie. shortwave radio). It became associated with gay pride / gay identity in the 1970s (for reasons of secrecy, discretion - being on the "same wavelength"). Today, lambda is still used in gay-friendly college fraternities and sororities.
  • Vitamin L (aka Anthranilic acid), is used as an intermediate for production of dyes and pigments, used in preparing perfumes to imitate jasmine and orange, used in pharmaceuticals as a UV-absorber, and used as corrosion inhibitors for metals and mold inhibitors in soya sauce.
  • phonetic sound, 'elle', can convey femininity (as in Elle magazine) from the French feminine pronoun 'elle', the masculine singular definite article in Spanish ('el'), or a transliteration of the word 'hell' in the Cockney dialect, commonly pronounced "'ell"
  • Japanese people frequently have trouble pronouncing 'L', often substituting it with the sound of 'R'
  • in 1529, French type designer and calligrapher Geofroy Tory claimed the ancient Romans designed the ideal 'L' based on the shadow cast by a human body shortly after the autumn equinox
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: LIMA
  • "'L' is the leg and the foot." -Victor Hugo, French poet & playwright
  • "The sound of the consonant 'L' means 'ascending light'." - Joseph E. Rael
  • L can also abbreviate constant, lake, large, Latin, law, leaf, league, learner's (license), Liberal, line, link, live, lodge, low, Luxembourg, self-indulgence