Northwest Semitic šîn represented a
voiceless postalveolar fricative (as in 'ip'). It originated most likely as a
pictogram of a
tooth () and represented the phoneme via the acrophonic principle.
Ancient Greek did not have a "sh" phoneme, so the derived Greek letter
Sigma () came to represent the
voiceless alveolar sibilant . While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician
šîn, its name
sigma is taken from the letter
Samekh, while the shape and position of
samekh but name of
šîn is continued in the
xi. Within Greek, the name of
sigma was influenced by its association with the Greek word (earlier ), "to hiss". The original name of the letter "Sigma" may have been
san, but due to the early history of the Greek
epichoric alphabets, "san" came to be identified as a separate letter,
Ϻ.
Herodotus reported that "san" was the name given by the
Dorians to the same letter called "Sigma" by the
Ionians. The
Western Greek alphabet used in
Cumae was adopted by the
Etruscans and
Latins in the 7th century BC, and over the following centuries, it developed into a range of
Old Italic alphabets, including the
Etruscan alphabet and the early
Latin alphabet. In
Etruscan, the value of Greek sigma (𐌔) was maintained, while san (𐌑) represented a separate phoneme, most likely "sh" (transliterated as
ś). The early Latin alphabet adopted sigma, but not san, as Old Latin did not have a "sh" phoneme. The shape of Latin S arises from Greek Σ by dropping one out of the four strokes of that letter. The (angular) S-shape composed of three strokes existed as a variant of the four-stroke letter Σ already in the epigraphy of
Western Greek alphabets, and the three and four strokes variants existed alongside one another in the classical Etruscan alphabet. In other
Italic alphabets (
Venetic,
Lepontic), the letter could be represented as a zig-zagging line of any number between three and six strokes. The Italic letter was also adopted into
Elder Futhark, as
Sowilō (), and appears with four to eight strokes in the earliest runic inscriptions, but is occasionally reduced to three strokes () from the later 5th century, and appears regularly with three strokes in
Younger Futhark. The
digraph for English arose in Middle English (alongside Sch (trigraph)|), replacing the Old English digraph. Similarly, Old High German was replaced by in Early Modern High German orthography.
Long s , dated 1496) illustrating the use of long and round
s:
prieſters tochter ("priest's daughter"). The
minuscule form ſ, called the
long s, developed in the early medieval period, within the
Visigothic and
Carolingian hands, with predecessors in the
half-uncial and
cursive scripts of
Late Antiquity. It remained standard in western writing throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types. It existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short"
s, which were at the time only used at the end of words. In most Western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the 18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. In Spain, the change was mainly accomplished between 1760 and 1766. In France, the change occurred between 1782 and 1793. Printers in the United States stopped using the long
s between 1795 and 1810. In English orthography, the London printer
John Bell (1745–1831) pioneered the change. His edition of Shakespeare, in 1785, was advertised with the claim that he "ventured to depart from the common mode by rejecting the long 'ſ' in favor of the round one, as being less liable to error....."
The Times of London made the switch from the long to the short
s with its issue of 10 September 1803.
Encyclopædia Britannica's 5th edition, completed in 1817, was the last edition to use the long
s. In
German orthography, long
s was retained in
Fraktur (
Schwabacher) type as well as in standard cursive (
Sütterlin) well into the 20th century, until official use of that typeface was abolished in 1941. The
ligature of
ſs (or
ſz) was retained; however, it gave rise to the
Eszett in contemporary German orthography. ==Use in writing systems==