E

Abbreviation for east.

E

Fifth and most often used letter of the English alphabet. Its phonetic value varies, as in the different sounds represented in ‘me’, ‘men’, ‘prey’, ‘pretty’, and ‘fern’. As a final letter it is usually silent, as in ‘table’.

In the Semitic alphabet e was a consonant, with the sound /h/, and was called he. The Greeks adopted it from the Semitic alphabet, and it became epsilon (Ε, ε).

E

In music, the third note, or mediant, of the scale of C major.