Everson, Michael; Baker, Peter; Emiliano, António; Grammel, Florian; Haugen, Odd Einar; Luft, Diana; Pedro, Susana; Schumacher, Gerd; Stötzner, Andreas (2006-01-30). "L2/06-027: Proposal to add Medievalist characters to the UCS" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2018-09-19 . Retrieved 2018-03-24. In the United Kingdom under the old system (before 2001), a licence plate that begins with "K" for example "K123 XYZ" would correspond to a vehicle registered between August 1, 1992, and July 31, 1993. Again under the old system, a licence plate that ends with "K" for example "ABC 123K" would correspond to a vehicle that was registered between August 1, 1971, and July 31, 1972. Sihler, Andrew L. (1995). New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (illustrated ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 21. ISBN 0-19-508345-8. Archived from the original on 2016-11-09 . Retrieved 2016-10-18.

The letter K comes from the Greek letter Κ ( kappa), which was taken from the Semitic kaph, the symbol for an open hand. [2] This, in turn, was likely adapted by Semitic tribes who had lived in Egypt from the hieroglyph for "hand" representing /ḏ/ in the Egyptian word for hand, ⟨ ḏ-r-t⟩ (likely pronounced /ˈcʼaːɾat/ in Old Egyptian). The Semites evidently assigned it the sound value /k/ instead, because their word for hand started with that sound. [3] In most languages where it is employed, this letter represents the sound /k/ (with or without aspiration) or some similar sound. Subscript small k was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal standardization in 1902 [7] Ruppel, Klaas; Aalto, Tero; Everson, Michael (2009-01-27). "L2/09-028: Proposal to encode additional characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2017-10-11 . Retrieved 2018-03-24. The Semitic form may derive from an earlier sign representing a bent hand. Early Greek forms from the island of Thera have some resemblance to the Semitic. The Chalcidic, Etruscan, and Latin forms were identical, and the letter has retained its shape until modern times. The minuscule form k is but a slight adaptation of the majuscule with the point of junction of three strokes lowered and the lower transverse stroke consequently much shortened and moved to the right. A rounded form also appears in handwriting.

K

On Idaho license plates, an initial K in the plate number indicates it was issued in Kootenai County. K was brought into the Latin alphabet with the name ka /kaː/ to differentiate it from C, named ce (pronounced /keː/) and Q, named qu and pronounced /kuː/. In the earliest Latin inscriptions, the letters C, K and Q were all used to represent the sounds /k/ and /ɡ/ (which were not differentiated in writing). Of these, Q was used before a rounded vowel (e.g. ⟨EQO⟩ 'ego'), K before /a/ (e.g. ⟨KALENDIS⟩ 'calendis'), and C elsewhere. Later, the use of C and its variant G replaced most usages of K and Q. K survived only in a few fossilized forms such as Kalendae, "the calends". [4] In the International System of Units (SI), the SI prefix for one thousand is kilo-, officially abbreviated as k: for example, prefixed to metre/ meter or its abbreviation m, kilometre or km signifies a thousand metres. As such, people occasionally represent numbers in a non-standard notation by replacing the last three zeros of the general numeral with K, as in 30K for 30,000. a b Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07). "L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes" (PDF).

K is the unit symbol for the kelvin, used to measure thermodynamic temperature (note: degree sign is not used with this symbol). The letter ⟨k⟩ is silent at the start of an English word when it comes before the letter ⟨n⟩, as in the words knight, knife, knot, know, and knee. Like J, X, Q, and Z, the letter K is not used very frequently in English. It is the fifth least frequently used letter in the English language, with a frequency in words of about 0.8%.In late Latin and the early Romance period the unvoiced velar, represented by C, became palatalized before front vowels, and in the 12th century K was reintroduced as a substitute for C to represent the velar before front vowels since C did duty for both the velar and palatal in such cases and confusion was thus liable to arise. Thus the English word cyng, for example, began to be spelled kyng, later king. After Greek words were taken into Latin, the Kappa was transliterated as a C. Loanwords from other alphabets with the sound /k/ were also transliterated with C. Hence, the Romance languages generally use C, in imitating Classical Latin's practice, and have K only in later loanwords from other language groups. The Celtic languages also tended to use C instead of K, and this influence carried over into Old English.