Omega

Omega (/ˈ oʊ m ɪ ɡ ə , oʊ ˈ m iː ɡ ə , oʊ ˈ m ɛ ɡ ə , oʊ ˈ m eɪ ɡ ə / ;[1][2] capital: Ω, lowercase: ω; Ancient Greek ὦ, later ὦ μέγα, Modern Greek ωμέγα) is the 24th and last letter in the Greek alphabet. In the Greek numeric system/isopsephy (gematria), it has a value of 800. The word literally means "great O" (ō mega, mega meaning "great"), as opposed to omicron, which means "little O" (o mikron, micron meaning "little").[3]

In phonetic terms, the Ancient Greek Ω is a long open-mid o [ɔː] , comparable to the "aw" of the English word raw. In Modern Greek, Ω represents the mid back rounded vowel /o̞/ , the same sound as omicron. The letter omega is transcribed ō or simply o.

As the final letter in the Greek alphabet, omega is often used to denote the last, the end, or the ultimate limit of a set, in contrast to alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet; see Alpha and Omega.

Ω was not part of the early (8th century BC) Greek alphabets. It was introduced in the late 7th century BC in the Ionian cities of Asia Minor to denote a long open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔː] . It is a variant of omicron (Ο), broken up at the side (), with the edges subsequently turned outward (, , , ).[4] The Dorian city of Knidos as well as a few Aegean islands, namely Paros, Thasos and Melos, chose the exact opposite innovation, using a broken-up circle for the short and a closed circle for the long /o/ .[4]

The name Ωμέγα is Byzantine; in Classical Greek, the letter was called ō (ὦ ) (pronounced /ɔ̂ː/), whereas the omicron was called ou (οὖ ) (pronounced /ôː/).[5] The modern lowercase shape goes back to the uncial form , a form that developed during the 3rd century BC in ancient handwriting on papyrus, from a flattened-out form of the letter () that had its edges curved even further upward.[6]

In addition to the Greek alphabet, Omega was also adopted into the early Cyrillic alphabet. See Cyrillic omega (Ѡ, ѡ). A Raetic variant is conjectured to be at the origin or parallel evolution of the Elder Futhark ᛟ.

Omega was also adopted into the Latin alphabet, as a letter of the 1982 revision to the African reference alphabet. It has had little use. See Latin omega.

The uppercase letter Ω is used as a symbol:

The minuscule letter ω is used as a symbol:

[12]

These characters are used only as mathematical symbols. Stylized Greek text should be encoded using the normal Greek letters, with markup and formatting to indicate the style of the text.