Latin Small Letter K
Recognized more for its symbolic role as a prefix than for its frequency in prose, lowercase 'k' is the eleventh letter of the Latin alphabet and one of the less common consonants, accounting for roughly 0.77 % of characters in typical English corpora. It shares the voiceless velar plosive /k/ with the letter 'c', taking over where 'c' would soften — before 'e', 'i', and 'y'. It sits at ASCII code point 107 (0x6B), 32 above its uppercase counterpart 'K' at 75 (0x4B), maintaining the single-bit case offset (bit 5) shared by all ASCII A–Z / a–z pairs.
Technical Details
Code Example
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// Kilo constants#define KB 1024 // 1 KiB (binary)#define KB_SI 1000 // 1 KB (decimal)size_t buffer = 64 * KB; // 64 KiB buffer
Common Usage
Kilo prefix and its variants: Lowercase 'k' is the SI-standard prefix for 10³ (kHz, km, kg). In computing, both 'K' and 'k' have been used ambiguously for either 1000 or 1024 bytes — a conflict the IEC addressed with the kibi prefix (KiB for 1024 bytes). Informally, 'k' serves as shorthand for 'thousand' in non-technical contexts (10k followers, $500k).
Silent consonant cluster: In English, 'k' is silent before 'n' at the start of a word — knee, knife, know, knock, knight — a remnant of Old English and Germanic pronunciation where the /k/ was originally voiced. This kn- pattern is a well-known source of spelling difficulty for learners.
Tertiary loop variable: Following the Fortran-era convention that established 'i' and 'j' as default loop counters, 'k' serves as the conventional third iterator in nested loops across most mainstream languages — typically signaling a third level of nesting (for i… for j… for k…).
Diacritical variants: ķ (cedilla) is a distinct letter in Latvian, ḳ (dot below) appears in IAST transliteration and some African language orthographies, and ǩ (caron) is used in Skolt Sami — a small but geographically dispersed set of modified forms.
Kilo prefix and its variants: Lowercase 'k' is the SI-standard prefix for 10³ (kHz, km, kg). In computing, both 'K' and 'k' have been used ambiguously for either 1000 or 1024 bytes — a conflict the IEC addressed with the kibi prefix (KiB for 1024 bytes). Informally, 'k' serves as shorthand for 'thousand' in non-technical contexts (10k followers, $500k).
Silent consonant cluster: In English, 'k' is silent before 'n' at the start of a word — knee, knife, know, knock, knight — a remnant of Old English and Germanic pronunciation where the /k/ was originally voiced. This kn- pattern is a well-known source of spelling difficulty for learners.
Tertiary loop variable: Following the Fortran-era convention that established 'i' and 'j' as default loop counters, 'k' serves as the conventional third iterator in nested loops across most mainstream languages — typically signaling a third level of nesting (for i… for j… for k…).
Diacritical variants: ķ (cedilla) is a distinct letter in Latvian, ḳ (dot below) appears in IAST transliteration and some African language orthographies, and ǩ (caron) is used in Skolt Sami — a small but geographically dispersed set of modified forms.