B

Second letter of the English alphabet. It corresponds to the Greek beta (Β, β), the Semitic beth, and the Arabic be, and as written in the current Western European alphabet, is derived from classical Roman block letters. The sound is a voiced bilabial plosive, although in some words, such as ‘debt’ and ‘doubt’, it is silent.

In some languages, the earlier /b/ has developed into /p/, /v/, /f/, or /m/. For example, the ancient Greeks had no /v/ sound, but in modern Greek (which has no /b/ sound) the letter beta is used for the /v/ sound. The Cyrillic alphabet (ancestor of the Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Ukrainian alphabets), which descended from the Greek, also used the Greek beta for the sound /v/, and added a new variation of it for the sound /b/.

B

In music, the seventh note, or leading note, of the scale of C major. In Germany, B corresponds to B♭, and B♮ is represented by H.