Β

Beta in a capital letter Etymologicum Magnum (1499).

Beta (uppercase Β, lowercase β [italics ϐ ]; called in ancient Greek βῆτα bêta /bɛ̂ː.ta/, in Modern Greek βήτα víta /ˈvi.ta/) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In ancient Greek it was pronounced [b], in modern Greek it is pronounced [v].

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it is the letter that represents the voiced bilabial fricative.

Do not confuse beta with its derivatives in the Latin alphabet, B, and in the Cyrillic alphabet, В; nor with ß (eszett), a ligature of the letters ese and zeta, ſs or ss of the German language.

In the Greek numeral system it has a value of 2 (Β΄).

History

The letter beta derives from the letter fenicia bēt (), this in turn derives from the protosinatic alphabet that is inspired by the Egyptian hieroglyphics to create letters by the principle of acrophony. Bet, which means "house" in many semitic languages, would be based on the hieroglyph that represents the stylized plane of a simple house of a room with an entrance .

In the earliest Greek inscriptions after the Dark Ages, around the VIII century B.C. C., the orientation of the letter is the same as that of the Phoenician alphabet. In later Greek alphabets, it is usually rotated 90°.

In the Greek archaic alphabets the letter was probably the letter with more of different epicic variants. Apart from the classic form, it could be rounded () or puntiaguda () there were many other forms like (Gortina, Crete) and (Thera), (Argos) (Melos) (Corinth) (Megara, Byzantium) and (Cyclades).

Lowercase β also has a double arc, but lowercase is more rounded in shape than uppercase, and the left side of the letter tends to have an extension that sticks out below the baseline. Within the word, however, some typographical traditions, such as that of the French copyists, use a lowercase variation without the descending stem ϐ (for example, a word meaning a book may appear in the form βίβλος or βίϐλος). The lowercase letter β should not be confused with the letter Slightly similar ß, i.e. the German double s (which usually does not have a lower extension and tends to be open at the bottom).

Epigraphic variants

Epigraphic sources include the following variants:

Use

In ancient Greek, beta represents the voiced bilabial stop consonant /b/. In medieval and modern Greek, beta represents the voiced labio-dental fricative consonant /v/.

In the Greek number system, beta represents 2.

In science

• Beta-operatory is used to designate those sciences in whose fields the corporeal subject appears.
• In softwarewhen talking about a beta program, reference is made to a developing version or with technical failures that are usually more open than Alpha versions.
• In the Greek numeration system its value is two (β-type).
• In nuclear physics and particles it represents a type of disintegration, beta disintegration.
• In the soundness (“volumen”) of a sound wave.
• In virology, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) designated Beta as a variant of concern, a mutation of SARS-CoV-2, virus that produces COVID-19 disease, found in May 2020 in South Africa.

Unicode

• Greek

• Latino

• Maths

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