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Phi

This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Phi.

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Phi is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. In Ancient Greek, it represented an aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive ([pʰ]), which was the origin of its usual romanization as "ph". In modern Greek, it represents a voiceless labiodental fricative ([f]) and is correspondingly romanized as "f". Its origin is uncertain but it may be that phi originated as the letter qoppa and initially represented the sound /kʷʰ/ before shifting to Classical Greek [pʰ]. In traditional Greek numerals, phi has a value of 500 (φʹ) or 500 000 (͵φ). The Cyrillic letter Ef (Ф, ф) descends from phi.

Phi is also used as a symbol for the golden ratio and on other occasions in math and science. This use is separately encoded as the Unicode glyph ϕ. The modern Greek pronunciation of the letter is sometimes encountered in English (as /fiː/) when the letter is being used in this sense.

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Graphical characteristics:
Asymmetric, Closed shape, Monochrome, Contains both straight and curved lines, Has crossing lines.

Category: Alphabets.

Phi is part of the Greek alphabet group.

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The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the first alphabetic script to have distinct letter… read more »

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