K

K

Letter / Noun · /keɪ/

Definition

The eleventh letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet; in informal use, K represents one thousand (from kilo-); in computing, K or KB represents kilobyte (1,024 bytes).

Origin

Derived from the Phoenician letter kaph (meaning palm of the hand), which passed through Greek kappa into Latin. K was relatively rare in Classical Latin, which preferred C for the /k/ sound. The letter was revived more fully in mediaeval and modern English. The thousand-unit abbreviation comes from the SI prefix kilo-, from Greek khilioi (thousand).