e

The Latin E is one of several letters derived from the Greek ε. Apart from being the most frequent letter in, for example, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and (especially) Dutch, in some languages e can constitute a whole word.

In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish e a number of other Romance languages, e is a common conjunction meaning “and”. In Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, e is a pronoun for “he” or “him”. In Hungarian, this word means “this”.

The transcendental number e (2.71828...) is a mathematical constant, the base of the natural logarithm. In physics, e is a fundamental constant known as the elementary charge. Also, e is a symbol for the electron, sometimes written as e⁻ to avoid confusion with the positron, e⁺. In astronomy, e denotes orbital eccentricity, a parameter that determines the amount by which an object’s orbit deviates from a perfect circle. Finally, ℮ or the estimated sign is a mark that you can see on many pre-packed goods (such as chocolate bars and bottles of drink) sold in the EU.

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a | а

Apart from being the first letter of Latin alphabet, a can constitute a whole word.

In modern English, we chiefly encounter a in a role of an indefinite article. In Spanish, a is one of the most common words that serves as a preposition. In Russian and some other Slavic languages, а (or a; Cyrillic letter а looks exactly like Latin a) is an interesting conjunction which may variably mean “and”, “and yet”, “but”, “whereas” or “while”.

In physics, a is a common symbol for acceleration. For example, Newton’s second law can be written as

F = ma where F is the force, m is the mass.

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☘ | shamrock

In case you are sick of Mandarin, I’ve got good news for you: I’m going to write here about some other symbols as well. Let’s start with ☘.

Shamrock (pronounced /ʃæmrɒk/ 🔊) is the trefoil leaf of a clover, especially Trifolium repens, commonly used as a symbol of Ireland. According to the legend, St. Patrick have used the shamrock to explain the idea of the Holy Trinity to the Irish.

The word is derived from Irish seamróg, diminutive of semar (“clover”).

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