Psi (letter) Psi (letter) Psi (; uppercase ', lowercase '; "psi" ) is the 23rd letter of the Greek alphabet and has a numeric value of 700. In both Classical and Modern Greek, the letter indicates the combination /ps/ (as in English word "lapse"). For Greek loanwords in Latin and modern languages with Latin alphabets, psi is usually transliterated as "ps". The letter's origin is uncertain. It may or may not derive from the Phoenician alphabet. It appears in the 7th century BC, expressing /ps/ in the Eastern alphabets, but /kʰ/ in the Western alphabets (the sound expressed by Χ in the
Shin (letter) languages, as follows: In the Arabic alphabet, ' is at the original (21st) position in Abjadi order. A letter variant ' takes the place of Samekh at 15th position. "" represents , and is the 13th letter of the modern alphabet order and is written thus: The Arabic letter "šīn" was an acronym for "something" ( "šayʾ(un)" ) meaning the unknown in algebraic equations. In the transcription into Spanish, the Greek letter "chi" (χ) was used which was later transcribed into Latin "x". According to some sources, this is the origin of "x" used for the unknown in the equations.