ʽAʹYIN

ʽAʹyin or, as commonly anglicized, ayin [ע]. The sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, later used also outside the Hebrew Scriptures as a number to denote seventy.

The Greek vowel oʹmi·kron (from which we get our English “o”) is derived from ʽaʹyin; however, the Hebrew letter is not a vowel but a consonant. It represents a peculiar guttural sound pronounced at the back of the throat and has no equivalent in English. It is transliterated in writing by a raised, reversed comma (ʽ). It appears as the initial letter in each of the verses of Psalm 119:121-128, Hebrew text.