Cyrillic O variants

Key takeaways

Cyrillic O variants belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Cyrillic O variants to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Cyrillic O variants from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter O. They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.

Monocular O

Monocular O (Ꙩ ꙩ) is one of the rare glyph variants of Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant was used in certain manuscripts in the root word ꙩко "eye", and also in some other functions, for example, in the word- and syllable-initial position. It is used in some late birchbark letters of the 14th and 15th centuries, where it is usually differentiated from a regular о, used after consonants, also by width, being a broad On (ѻ) with a dot inside. The letter resembles International Phonetic Alphabet bilabial click (ʘ) and the Gothic letter hwair (𐍈).

Binocular O

Binocular O (Ꙫ ꙫ) is found in certain manuscripts in the plural or dual forms of the root word eye, like Ꙫчи. A similar jocular glyph (called "double-dot wide O") has been suggested as a phonetic symbol for the "nasal-ingressive velar trill", a paralinguistic impression of a snort, due to the graphic resemblance to a pig snout.

Double monocular O

Double monocular O (Ꙭ ꙭ) is one of the exotic glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter O. This glyph variant can be found in certain manuscripts in the plural or dual forms of the word eye, for example ꙭчи "[two] eyes".

Multiocular O Multiocular O (ꙮ) is a unique glyph variant found in a single 15th-century manuscript (therefore a hapax legomenon), in the Old Church Slavonic phrase серафими многоꙮчитїи (abbreviated мн̑оꙮ҆читїи̑; serafimi mnogoočitii, 'many-eyed seraphim'). It was documented by Yefim Karsky in 1928 in the Buslaev Psalter, a psalter (copy of the Book of Psalms with additional material) originally believed to be from around 1429, now dated to c. 1487 – c. 1490 and found in the collection of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. The character was proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as character U+A66E ꙮ CYRILLIC LETTER MULTIOCULAR O in Unicode version 5.1 (2008). The representative glyph had seven eyes and sat on the baseline. However, in 2021, following a tweet highlighting the character, it came to linguist Michael Everson's attention that the character in the original manuscript was actually made up of ten eyes. After a 2022 proposal to change the character to reflect this, it was updated later that year for Unicode 15.0 to have ten eyes and to extend below the baseline.

Double O

Double O (Ꚙ ꚙ) is a variant of the letter О in the Cyrillic script. It is found in some early Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, where it is used in place of ⟨О⟩ in the words двꚙе "two" and ꚙбо "both", as well as their derivatives ꚙбанадесять "all twelve", and двꚙюнадесять "twelve". The Cyrillic "double O" resembles the Latin-script double-o ligature (ꝏ) and the Infinity symbol (∞).

Crossed O

Crossed O (Ꚛ ꚛ) is a glyph variant of Cyrillic O with the addition of a cross, used in Old Church Slavonic. The crossed O is primarily used in the word ꚛкрест (around, in the region of) in early Slavonic manuscripts, whose component крест means 'cross'.

Broad On

Broad On, also known as Round Omega (Ѻ ѻ; italics: Ѻ ѻ) is a positional and orthographical variant of the Cyrillic O. On (ѻнъ, onŭ) is a traditional name of Cyrillic letter О; these names are still in use in the Church Slavonic alphabet. Broad On is used only in the Church Slavonic language. In its alphabet (in primers and grammar books), broad and regular shapes of О share the same position, as they are not considered different letters. Uppercase is typically represented by broad Ѻ, and lowercase is either regular о or dual: both broad ѻ and regular о (in the same way as Greek uppercase Σ is accompanied with two lowercases σ, ς). Phonetically, broad Ѻ ѻ is the same as regular О о.

In standard Church Slavonic orthography (since the middle of the 17th century until present time), the broad shape of letter On is used instead of the regular shape of the same letter in the following cases:

as the first letter of a word's root, which could fall: at the beginning of the word: (ѻгнь, ѻтрокъ), after a prefix: (праѻтецъ), after another root in compound words (ѻбоюдуѻстрый); in the middle of the root in two geographical names (іѻрданъ—Jordan River, іѻппіа—city of Jaffa) and their derivatives; as the numerical sign to represent the number 70 (However, Church Slavonic editions printed outside the Russian Empire have often ignored this rule and used regular о as the numerical sign). Historically, Broad On was also used in the later Old Russian period, including documents, letters and other vernacular texts, to signal the initial position of a word or a syllable or occasionally to mark a closed vowel (developed in North Russian dialects since the 14th century). It is found in birch bark manuscripts and in some other Russian texts. Other glyphs could be used in the same functions, including Monocular O and Cyrillic Omega.

Name Broad On has no standard traditional name. The names used in literature (e.g. wide on) are shape-based or functional descriptions. A name from certain Russian sources, он польское, on pol'skoye (lit. "Polish O"), also points to the round shape of the letter, because Latin fonts from Poland had round "O", and the typical old Cyrillic "O" was lens-shaped and condensed. Now the character is often referred to by its conventional Unicode name "Round Omega".

Computing codes

See also Cyrillic script in Unicode Omega (Cyrillic) Latin letter ʘ (ʘ) Gothic letter Hwair (𐍈) Dotted zero

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Cyrillic O variants

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Cyrillic O variants claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Cyrillic O variants before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Cyrillic O variants ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Cyrillic O variants

In research: Cyrillic O variants appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Cyrillic O variants in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Cyrillic O variants is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Cyrillic letters, Eyes in culture, Palaeographic letters, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Cyrillic O variants outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Cyrillic O variants in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Cyrillic O variants means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Cyrillic O variants out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Cyrillic O variants in simple terms?

This is a list of rare glyph variants of the Cyrillic letter O. They were proposed for inclusion into Unicode in 2007 and incorporated as in Unicode 5.1.

Why does Cyrillic O variants matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Cyrillic O variants?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Cyrillic O variants.