Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • abbreviation karat
  • noun The 11th letter of the modern English alphabet.
  • noun Any of the speech sounds represented by the letter k.
  • noun The 11th in a series.
  • noun Something shaped like the letter K.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • The eleventh letter and eighth consonant of the English alphabet; the eleventh character also of the Phenician alphabet, from which it has come to us through the Latin and Greek.
  • In chem., the symbol for potassium (NL. kalium).
  • As an abbreviation: [lowercase] In meteorology, of cumulus (c being used for cirrus).
  • Of king, knight, etc.: as, K. G., Knight of the Garter.
  • Of
  • In math., k is generally a constant coefficient. It is also a unit vector perpendicular to i and j.
  • As a numeral in medieval use, 250.
  • As an abbreviation: In electricity, of kathode (cathode, which see) and kathodic (cathodic).
  • In mathematics: The Lemoine point in geometry.
  • In mineralogy, the middle letter of the general symbol hkl, given to the face of a crystal in the system of Miller. See symbol, 7.
  • In phys.: The symbol usually employed for moment of inertia. The letter K is used by some writers as a symbol of electrostatic capacity, but C is now almost universally adopted for this quantity.
  • A symbol usually employed to designate magnetic susceptibility.
  • A symbol for absolute temperature.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • the eleventh letter of the English alphabet, is nonvocal consonant. The form and sound of the letter K are from the Latin, which used the letter but little except in the early period of the language. It came into the Latin from the Greek, which received it from a Phœnician source, the ultimate origin probably being Egyptian. Etymologically K is most nearly related to c, g, h (which see).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The eleventh letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.
  • noun voiceless velar plosive.
  • noun The eleventh letter of the English alphabet, called kay and written in the Latin script.
  • noun The first letter of callsigns allocated to American broadcast television and radio stations west of the Mississippi river.
  • noun The ordinal number eleventh, derived from this letter of the English alphabet, called kay and written in the Latin script.
  • noun The eleventh letter of the English alphabet.
  • noun computing A kilobyte (more formally KB or kB).
  • noun colloquial kilometre or kilometres.
  • noun colloquial thousand or thousands.
  • noun The SI measurement value of 1,000
  • abbreviation See K
  • abbreviation colloquial, text messaging, Internet slang Abbreviation of okay. (Also spelled 'kay.)

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a unit of information equal to 1024 bytes
  • adjective denoting a quantity consisting of 1,000 items or units
  • noun a light soft silver-white metallic element of the alkali metal group; oxidizes rapidly in air and reacts violently with water; is abundant in nature in combined forms occurring in sea water and in carnallite and kainite and sylvite
  • noun a unit of information equal to 1000 bytes
  • noun the basic unit of thermodynamic temperature adopted under the Systeme International d'Unites
  • noun the cardinal number that is the product of 10 and 100
  • noun the 11th letter of the Roman alphabet
  • noun street names for ketamine

Etymologies

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Examples

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  • K means kilobytes. You can't have too much k in your code.

    June 28, 2007

  • K. Chemical element symbol for Potassium.

    December 16, 2007

  • the eleventh letter in the alphabet

    November 12, 2010

  • k

    is a shortening of OK

    which is itself a shortening of okay

    which is a shortening of okelydokely ok.. not really.

    but it's related to okiedokie

    okey dokey

    January 15, 2013

  • "“Alright”, “Yes”, and the much-hated “k” just got a visual redesign."

    http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/22/facebook-like-replies/

    hang on.. people didn't like k?

    June 23, 2013