Iota
Encyclopedia : I : IO : IOT : Iota
- For the esoteric programming language, see Iota and Jot.
Iota is pronounced as /i/ (the English ee sound). In ancient Greek it occurred in both long and short versions, but this distinction has been lost in Modern Greek.
Upsilon participated as the second element in falling diphthongs, with both long and short vowels as the first element. Where the first element was long, the iota was lost in pronunciation at an early date, and was written in polytonic orthography as iota subscript in other words as a very small ι under the main vowel, for instance ᾼ ᾳ ῌ ῃ ῼ ῳ
The word "iota" is also used in English to express a very small amount, because iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet.
The word is also used in a common English phrase, 'not one iota of difference', to signify a meaningless distinction (lit. "not even a small difference"). The phrase derives from the introduction to the Antithesis of the Law in the Gospel of Matthew, and became common in the theological debate which arose around the time of the Nicene Creed, regarding the nature of the Holy Trinity. The argument centered on which of two alternative Greek words, differing only in a single 'iota' letter, should be used in describing Jesus's relationship to the Holy Trinity. One word, 'homo', would mean that Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father, and the other 'homoi', would mean that Jesus was of similar substance.
Symbol
The Iota symbol is used to sort items in the APL programming language.
The lowercase Iota symbol is sometimes used to write the imaginary unit but more often Roman i or j are used.
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