ס, the Hebrew cursive letter samekh

History

ס is the 15th letter of the Hebrew alphabet and has a numerical value of 60. In traditional and modern Hebrew and Yiddish, it represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/.

Cursive samekh is written as a closed oval or circular loop executed in a single counter-clockwise motion, presenting a softer, more rounded profile than the blocky printed square glyph.

In handwritten documents, cursive samekh must be distinguished from final mem, primarily by the orientation of its closure and the curvature of its top and sides.

Samekh is the only letter of the Semitic abjad that has no surviving descendant in the Arabic alphabet,^[1] though it was present in the Nabataean alphabet, the Arabic alphabet's immediate predecessor, as simkath.^[2] It may be based on a hieroglyph for a tent peg or support, such as the djed pillar,^[3] and the Hebrew root s-m-kh means support.^[4] In Hebrew samekh sounds the same as shin with a dot on the left, sin.^[5]