I

I, ninth letter of the English alphabet. It originated in the ancient Semitic alphabet, where it may have derived from an early symbol for “hand.” It later passed into the Greek alphabet and was called iota. The original letter was probably a consonant representing our y sound, but in most Greek and Latin, as well as in many modern European languages, its sound is that of the vowel in meet. In English it may be short, as in fit, or long, as in fine, or it may combine with other letters for a great variety of sounds. The dot over the lowercase i first appeared in the 11th century. In chemistry, I is the symbol for iodine.