Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

N

N (ĕn), the fourteenth letter of English alphabet, is a vocal consonent, and, in allusion to its mode of formation, is called the dentinasal or linguanasal consonent. Its commoner sound is that heard in ran, done; but when immediately followed in the same word by the sound of g hard or k (as in single, sink, conquer), it usually represents the same sound as the digraph ng in sing, bring, etc. This is a simple but related sound, and is called the gutturo-nasal consonent. See Guide to Pronunciation, §§ 243-246.

The letter N came into English through the Latin and Greek from the Phœnician, which probably derived it from the Egyptian as the ultimate origin. It is etymologically most closely related to M. See M.

N, n. (Print.) A measure of space equal to half an M (or em); an en.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.