Teth

This article is about the Semitic letter. For the 5th-century Cornish saint also known as Teth, see Saint Tetha. For the planet from Star Wars, see List of Star Wars planets and moons § Teth.

Not to be confused with teeth.

← Heth Teth Yodh →
Phoenician	𐤈‎
Hebrew	ט‎
Aramaic	𐡈‎
Syriac	ܛ‎
Arabic	ط‎
Phonemic representation	tˤ
Position in alphabet	9
Numerical value	9
Alphabetic derivatives of the Phoenician
Greek	Θ
Latin	ϴ
Cyrillic	Ѳ

Teth, also written as Ṭēth or Tet, is the ninth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Arabic ṭāʾ ط‎, Aramaic ṭēṯ 𐡈, Hebrew ṭēt ט‎, Phoenician ṭēt 𐤈, and Syriac ṭēṯ ܛ. The Phoenician letter also gave rise to the Greek theta (Θ), originally an aspirated voiceless dental stop but now used for the voiceless dental fricative. The Arabic letter (ط) is sometimes transliterated as Tah in English, for example in Arabic script in Unicode.

The sound value of Teth is /tˤ/, one of the Semitic emphatic consonants.

Origins

The Phoenician letter name ṭēth may mean "spinning wheel" pictured as (compare Hebrew root ט-ו-י‎ (ṭ-w-y) meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named ṭab 'good', Aramaic טַב‎ 'tav', Hebrew טוב‎ 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern Arabic طَيّب 'ṭayyib', all of identical meaning.

Jewish religious books about the "holy letters" from the 10th century onward discuss the connection or origin of the letter Teth with the word tov "good". This was especially emphasized ever since the late 1600s after the Baal Shem Tov became influential, since the letter Teth was in his Acronym standing for Tov, and goodness was part of his philosophy. The acrostic poems of the Bible use 'Tov' to represent the letter (e.g. Psalm 119:65-72).

Arabic ṭāʾ

ṭāʾ طاء
ط
Usage
Writing system	Arabic script
Type	Abjad
Language of origin	Arabic language
Sound values	tˤ
Alphabetical position	16
History
Development	𐤈 𐡈‎ 𐢋‎ ط
Other
Writing direction	Right-to-left

The letter is named ṭāʾ  طَاءْ; Modern Standard Arabic pronunciation: /tˤ/.

It has four forms, and the letter does not change its shape depending on its position in the word:

Position in word	Isolated	Final	Medial	Initial
Glyph form: (Help)	ط‎	ـط‎	ـطـ‎	طـ‎

Hebrew tet

Orthographic variants
Serif	sans-Serif	Monospaced	Cursive Hebrew	Rashi script
ט	ט	ט

The Hebrew spelling of name of the letter: טֵית‎

Hebrew pronunciation

In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive /t/, and is therefore usually homophonic with the abjad's final letter, Tav ת‎. However, Tet can be pharyngealized to produce [tˤ] in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation. [tˤ] is also probably the pronunciation in Biblical Hebrew.

Significance

In gematria, Tet represents the number nine. When followed by an apostrophe, it means 9,000. The most common example of this usage is in the numbers of the Hebrew years (e.g., ט'תשנד‎ in numbers would be the date 9754).

As well, in gematria, the number 15 is written with Tet and Vav, (9+6) to avoid the normal construction Yud and Hei (10+5) which spells a name of God. Similarly, 16 is written with Tet and Zayin (9+7) instead of Yud and Vav (10+6) to avoid spelling part of the Tetragrammaton.

Tet is also one of the seven letters which receive special crowns (called tagin) when written in a Sefer Torah. See Shin, Ayin, Gimmel, Nun, Zayin, and Tzadi.

Similar symbols

A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as $\otimes$, but this is presumably an independent development, by modification of the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew ט‎ is also visually similar to the letter Ʋ.

Character encodings

Character information

Preview	ט		ط		ܛ		ࠈ
Unicode name	HEBREW LETTER TET		ARABIC LETTER TAH		SYRIAC LETTER TETH		SAMARITAN LETTER TIT
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	1496	U+05D8	1591	U+0637	1819	U+071B	2056	U+0808
UTF-8	215 152	D7 98	216 183	D8 B7	220 155	DC 9B	224 160 136	E0 A0 88
Numeric character reference	ט	ט	ط	ط	ܛ	ܛ	ࠈ	ࠈ

Character information

Preview	𐎉		𐡈		𐤈
Unicode name	UGARITIC LETTER TET		IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER TETH		PHOENICIAN LETTER TET
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	66441	U+10389	67656	U+10848	67848	U+10908
UTF-8	240 144 142 137	F0 90 8E 89	240 144 161 136	F0 90 A1 88	240 144 164 136	F0 90 A4 88
UTF-16	55296 57225	D800 DF89	55298 56392	D802 DC48	55298 56584	D802 DD08
Numeric character reference	𐎉	𐎉	𐡈	𐡈	𐤈	𐤈