K K, k, the 11th letter and the 8th con- sonant of the English alphabet. This letter has before vowels, and before all consonants except n, the same phonetic value in all the alphabets where it ap- pears — a guttural momentary sound pro- duced by raising the back of the tongue to the back of the palate, as in kill, keen, king. Before n it is not sounded in English, as in knee, knell, knife. From the 16th to the 18th century it was used in English at the end of words after c, apparently to strengthen the hard c, as in alchemick, musick, publick, but this usage is now confined to mono- syllables, as check, clock, duck, sick. Forming part of the original Phoeni- cian alphabet, k passed into Greek and the oldest Latin ; but c was substituted for it in the latter at an early date, and it only survived in a few common abbreviations (see below). In the early part of the present era, moreover, the sound of k or c (hard) was lost in Italy. It under- went palatization — i. e., it was produced by raising the middle instead of the back of the tongue to the palate, and c was sounded as ch (tsh). Those modern alphabets, therefore, derived from Italy (i. e., Celtic, Modern Italian, French, and Spanish) have, properly speaking, no k, and the sound and letter are only present in a few foreign importations. In those alphabets, however, derived through the Greek {i. e., Teutonic and Slavonic) k plays an important part. But in Eng- lish the letter holds a very ambiguous position. The earliest Anglo-Saxon al- phabet, being derived from Roman mis- sionaries, was without k, and c was gen- erally used to represent its sound, but German influence soon introduced it to northern England, and made it inter- changeable with c throughout the coun- try, and the two letters were used in- differently (cyning, kyning). The Nor- man French of the Conquest brought in many words in which k could have no place, and not only often softened the old c (hard) to ch, or c (sibilant did, child), but gave c general predominance over k, even when the original sound was retained. In northern England, how- ever, it continued to be freely used in words in which in S. dialects k had given way to ch or c (sibilant) — N. rike (kingdom), S. riche; N. croke (cross), S. crouche; N. Alnmcfc, S. GreQuwich; N. Caister, S. Chester. In Lowland Scotch, likewise, k still retained, as it does to this day, its old importance (kirk and church). K has undergone many other phonetic changes in Indo-European lan- guages. In the Grasco-Latin branch it was sometimes labialized, and became p, Latin equus and Greek hippos =hoTse, Sanskrit kankan, and Greek pente, i. e., penpe = five. In English it has been occasionally replaced by t. Old English bak, Modem English bat, make=mate, maked=:made. As an initial K is used, in orders of knighthood for knight; as K. G., Knight of the Garter; K. T., Knight of the Thistle; K. C. B., Knight Commander of the Bath. As a sjrmbol K is used: 1. For numerals (Roman) = 250, or with a line above it = 250,000; in Greek. K with a perpendicular stroke below it =:20; but when the stroke is written above it, the sum is increased a thou- sand fold, and it then equals 20,000. 2. In chemistry, for potassium (being the initial letter of kalium) by which name the metal is also known. KAABA, or CAABA (ka'ba or ka'a- ba), the name of an oblong stone build- ing within the great Mosque of Mecca. According to the legend Adam first wor- shiped on this spot, after his expulsion from Paradise, in a tent sent down from heaven for this purpose. Seth substi- tuted for the tent a structure of clay and stone, which was, however, destroyed by the Deluge, but afterward rebuilt by Abraham and Ishmael. It is, as it now 304
