page_title: Lambda
hierarchical_section_title: Lambda
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Alphabet grec peint sur la panse d'une coupe attique à figures noires. Español: Alfabeto griego arcaico, variante occidental. Deutsch: Frühform des griechischen Alphabets auf einer attischen Schwarzfigurenschale. English: Early Greek alphabet painted on the body of an Attic black-figure cup.
context_page_description: Lambda is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the sound /l/. In the system of Greek numerals lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed. Lambda gave rise to the Latin L and the Cyrillic El. The ancient grammarians and dramatists give evidence to the pronunciation as in Classical Greek times. In Modern Greek the name of the letter, Λάμδα, is pronounced.
  In early Greek alphabets, the shape and orientation of lambda varied. Most variants consisted of two straight strokes, one longer than the other, connected at their ends. The angle might be in the upper-left, lower-left, or top. Other variants had a vertical line with a horizontal or sloped stroke running to the right. With the general adoption of the Ionic alphabet, Greek settled on an angle at the top; the Romans put the angle at the lower-left.
  The HTML 4 character entity references for the Greek capital and small letter lambda are &#923; and &#955; respectively.
  The Unicode code points for lambda are U+039B and U+03BB.
context_section_description: Lambda /ˈlæmdə/ (uppercase Λ, lowercase λ; Greek: λάμ(β)δα lám(b)da) is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the sound /l/. In the system of Greek numerals lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave rise to the Latin L and the Cyrillic El (Л). The ancient grammarians and dramatists give evidence to the pronunciation as [laːbdaː] (λάβδα) in Classical Greek times. In Modern Greek the name of the letter, Λάμδα, is pronounced [ˈlam.ða].
  In early Greek alphabets, the shape and orientation of lambda varied. Most variants consisted of two straight strokes, one longer than the other, connected at their ends.  The angle might be in the upper-left, lower-left ("Western" alphabets), or top ("Eastern" alphabets). Other variants had a vertical line with a horizontal or sloped stroke running to the right. With the general adoption of the Ionic alphabet, Greek settled on an angle at the top; the Romans put the angle at the lower-left.
  The HTML 4 character entity references for the Greek capital and small letter lambda are &#923; and &#955; respectively.
  The Unicode code points for lambda are U+039B and U+03BB.
caption: The Greek alphabet on a black figure vessel, with a Phoenician-lamed-shaped lambda. The gamma has the shape of modern lambda.
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