History of the Greek alphabet consonant letter, rather than seemingly have two exceptions in spelling. Greek, like Phoenician, made a distinction for vowel length; indeed, Greek had five short vowels and seven long vowels, but only five vowel letters. As in Phoenician, the difference in length was not originally made in writing. However, by the 6th century BC the letter eta (not needed for a consonant in eastern dialects of Greek, which lacked ) came to stand for the long vowel , and a new letter, omega, was developed for long . The provenance of omega is not known, but it is generally assumed to
Greek alphabet by the foundation of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at the College of William and Mary in 1776. The name of this fraternal organization is an acronym for the ancient Greek phrase Φιλοσοφία Βίου Κυβερνήτης ("Philosophia Biou Kybernētēs"), which means "Love of wisdom, the guide of life" and serves as the organization's motto. Sometimes early fraternal organizations were known by their Greek letter names because the mottos that these names stood for were secret and revealed only to members of the fraternity. The Greek letter names of most fraternal organizations today are meaningless and do not stand for anything, which