• fourteen letter of the Latin alphabet, eleventh consonant
  • phonetic name: "aveolar nasal"; sound: place your tongue against your alveolar ridge, lower your uvula and vocalize through the nasal cavity (n.b.: the pronunciation creates a vibration through the face and head which can be described as reassuring, appeasing, tender and intimate)
  • Egyptian hieroglyphs were flowing water and a snake
  • the name for the letter in the Phoenician, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic alphabets is nun (pronounced "noon"), which means "fish" or "water snake"
  • Greeks adopted it as their letter nu (uppercase Ν, lowercase ν), giving us the final letterform we have today (Greeks also gave M and N their rhyming names)
  • in Roman, 'N' once represented 900 (interestingly, M represents 1000)
  • Roman rhetorician Quintilian called N littera tinniens ("the chiming letter"), stating that its sound is "more clear and more frank than other consonants" (n.b.: Lower case 'n' is also reminiscent of a Roman arch or vault)
  • N is a close relative of M, having similar name, sound and shape since the Phoenicians
  • lower case n is a close relative of lower case u; in the 15th and 16th centuries, they could only be differentiated by their context within a word
  • upper case N rotated 90 degrees clockwise becomes upper case Z
  • N with a diacritical tilde (Ñ / ñ) is used in Spanish and Filipino alphabets
  • associated with inferiority, negation and birth
  • N is associated with birth in the prefix "neo-"
  • the earlier version, nun (fish), is said to be a symbolic image from where "it represents the Son of Man, every individual being produced" - a sperm, developing and floating in the womb
  • the Hebrew character represented strong qualities such as purity and power, which were supposed to be concealed for their retainment
  • the connection to water is amplified by the Greek nero and Etruscan neri (both meaning "water")
  • water is also the roots of other words starting with N: navigate, nautical, navy, naval, et al
  • with the exception of the Greek nai ("yes"), N generally expresses the negative (not, none, nothing, nobody, nowhere, never), even in other languages (no, nay, ni, non, nein, nyet, et al.)
  • in abbreviations, "N.B." signifies nota bene ("note well")
  • 'N' on a map, compass or weather map is North
  • "No." or "N°" is number, derived from the Latin numero
  • 'N' is the chemical symbol for nitrogen (#7 on the periodic table), a colourless and odourless gas vital to components of foods, fertilizers, and explosives, and makes up about 78% of the atmosphere by volume but the atmosphere
  • 'N' in physics is newton, a unit of force
  • 'N' in mathematics is an indefinite whole number (ie. "to the 'nth degree")
  • 'N' abbreviates the mathematical prefix nano-, from the Greek nanos, meaning "dwarf"
  • 'N' in printing is a unit of measurement (half the width of 'em' space)
  • 'N' with two horizontal strokes, ₦, is the symbol for the Nigerian naira currency
  • phonetic sound, 'en', can abbreviate "and" (cookies 'n cream, scratch 'n sniff, rock 'n roll)
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: NOVEMBER
  • N-word is a derogatory term meaning or relating to black people
  • "'N' is a gate with a diagonal bar." -Victor Hugo, French poet & playwright
  • "The sound vibration of the consonant 'N' means 'the personal and infinite self." - Joseph E. Rael
  • N can also abbreviate indefinite number, knight, nationalist, navy, neuter, neutral, neutron, nitrogen, nominative, noon, Norse, Norway, note, noun, number