• nineteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, fifteenth consonant
  • phonetic name: "voiceless alveolar sibilant"; sound: place your tongue behind your top teeth and gently whistle some air between them
  • Egyptian hieroglyph was a folded cloth, a lock or a water basin
  • Proto-Sinaitic sign was teeth, breasts or a bowl; adopted by the Phoenicians as shin (written like our W)
  • Greeks adopted it as their letter sigma (upper case Σ, lower case σ or ς)
  • in Roman, S was a sign for silence
  • until the 15th century, lower case (S) looked more like a lower case F (ſ)
  • in English, S has four different sounds (or, no sound): saffron, poison, tension, fusion, island
  • S has always been closely tied to snakes/serpents, because of its shape and sound
  • S is the most used first letter of all consonants, as it is common in many first letter consonant combos: sc, sh, sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, spl, spr, squ, st, str, sw, etc.
  • commonly seen doubled: mass, mess, miss, moss, muss
  • in many languages, -s (or -es) makes a singular noun plural (the winning strategy in Scrabble!)
  • S is often used in conjunction with an apostrophe (to show possession, or to abbreviate is, has or us) and is often done incorrectly. Most common error is "it's" vs. "its"; "it's" should ONLY be used to abbreviate "it is" or "it has"
  • double SS is a letter in the German alphabet called eszett (ß)
  • associated with sinuosity/meandering, danger, teeth
  • generally speaking, the letterform S is shaped much like an 8 or ∞ (the symbol for infinity), balanced at the spine. S is timeless continuity.
  • S is seen at the core of the yin yang symbol, also alluding to a dragon or serpent. Overall, this symbol shows balance between opposing elements: yin represents black, feminine, and passive; yang represents white, masculine and active. S is seductive and elegant, but also menacing and ominous (sin, Satin, hiss of a snake)
  • S can also be seen as a link in a chain, or the meandering path of a drunkard
  • S on a map, compass or weather map is South
  • in grade school, S stands for satisfactory
  • in music, S stands for solo (rest)
  • in time, S abbreviates second
  • in physics, S stands for siemens, a unit for measuring electrical conductance
  • in chemisty, S stands for entropy
  • S is the chemical symbol for nitrogen (#16 on the periodic table), a pale yellow, odourless, brittle solid, which is essential to life and found in meteorites, volcanoes, and hot springs.
  • S with a single (or double) vertical stroke ($) is the dollar sign
  • a section sign (§) is used in publishing to refer to a particular section of a document
  • SOS is morse code for Save Our Souls (although it has been argued that these letters were simply chosen because they were easy to remember, and did not abbreviate anything in particular)
  • SS stands for steamship in marine terminology; USS stands for United States ship
  • SS also stood for Schutzstaffel (defense squadron) in Nazi German. Hitler's private genocide army; the zigzag shape evoked power, avatism and patriotism (the jagged double SS was later adopted by rock band KISS in the 1970s)
  • S is commonly used for a emoticon :S (confused face)
  • NATO phonetic alphabet: SIERRA
  • James Joyce's Ulysses is closely tied to the letter S; the title has three S's (as does its inspirational text, the Odyssey), and the text begins and ends with the letter S: "Stately, plulp Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead ... [clip 750+ pages] ... and his heart was going mad and yes I said yes I will Yes." S-themes also permeate the text: links of a chain (connecting us to mortality), meandering, and infinity and the continuing cycles of life and human history.
  • "'S' is a serpent." -Victor Hugo, French poet & playwright
  • "The sound vibration of the consonant 'S' means 'one half of eternity'." - Joseph E. Rael
  • S can also abbreviate entropy, Sabbath, saint, Saturday, Saxon, shilling, school, sea, second, section, see, senate, September, sign, singular, small, socialist, society, son, success, Sunday, Sweden