C

C, third letter of the alphabet, derived from the letter gimel of the ancient Semitic alphabet and a rounded form of the Greek gamma. The Romans used C as an abbreviation for Gaius, and Cn for Gnaeus but also gave the letter a k-sound, which survives in modern English (case, concrete, etc.) C also has the “soft” sound of s, as in face and city. When C is combined with the letter H, 2 further sounds may be represented (church, loch); the combination can also have the K sound (ache, anchor, chronicle). C can also be a superfluous letter, as in thick. In musical notation, C is a note of the scale. In chemistry, it is the symbol of the element carbon, in roman numbers, C = 100.