Epsilon

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Epsilon ( , uppercase Ε, lowercase ε or ϵ; Greek: έψιλον) is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, corresponding phonetically to a mid front unrounded vowel IPA: [e̞] or IPA: [ɛ̝]. In the system of Greek numerals it also has the value five. It was derived from the Phoenician letter He (𐤄‎). Letters that arose from epsilon include the Latin E, Ë and Ɛ, and Cyrillic Е, È, Ё, Є and Э. The name of the letter was originally εἶ (eî [êː]), but it was later changed to ἒ ψιλόν (è psilón 'simple e') in the Middle Ages to distinguish the letter from the digraph ⟨αι⟩, a former diphthong that had come to be pronounced [e], and because the digraph ⟨ει⟩ had become unsuitable due to its own shift to [i]. In Modern Greek, its name has fused into έψιλον (épsilon). The uppercase form of epsilon is identical to Latin ⟨E⟩ but has its own code point in Unicode: U+0395 Ε GREEK CAPITAL LETTER EPSILON. The lowercase version has two typographical variants, both inherited from medieval Greek handwriting. One,...

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