a town of Germany, in the duchy of Lunenburg, situated on the river Aller, in E. Long. 10° 45'. N. Lat. 52° 50'.

H.

H, The eighth letter and sixth consonant in our alphabet; though some grammarians will have it to be only an aspiration, or breathing. But nothing can be more ridiculous than to dispute its being a distinct sound, and formed in a particular manner by the organs of speech, at least in our language: witness the words eat and heat, arm and harm, ear and bear, at and hat, &c. as pronounced with or without the h.

It is pronounced by a strong expiration of the breath between between the lips, closing, as it were, by a gentle motion of the lower jaw to the upper, and the tongue nearly approaching the palate.

There seems to be no doubt, but that our b, which is the same with that of the Romans, derived its figure from that of the Hebrew b. And, indeed, the Phoenicians, most ancient Greeks and Romans, used the same figure with our H, which in the series of all these alphabets keeps its primitive place, being the eighth letter.

H, used as a numeral, denotes 200; and with a dash over it, ῼ, 200,000.

As an abbreviation, H was used by the ancients to denote homo, heres, hora, &c. Thus H.B. stood for heres bonorum; and H.S. corruptly for L.I.S. ferreus; and H.A. for Hadrianus.