m
UK[ɛm]US[ɛm]
n
The 13th letter of the modern English alphabet.
n
The Roman numeral for 1,000.
n
A unit of measurement equal to the width of an em dash or the square of the body size of a typeface (in printing).
Etymology
The letter 'm' originated from the Phoenician letter 'mem', meaning 'water', which was depicted as a wavy line. The Greeks adopted it as 'mu', and the Etruscans and later the Romans adapted its form into the Latin alphabet. The sound it represents, the bilabial nasal [m], is one of the most basic and universal speech sounds, found in nearly all languages. Its use as a Roman numeral for 1,000 derives from the Latin word 'mille', meaning 'thousand'.
Analysis
This is a simplex word. It is a single-letter word representing a speech sound and a written symbol.
Examples
The word 'mother' begins with the letter m.
In Roman numerals, MD means 1500.
The typesetter specified the margin should be one em wide.