The sixteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, representing a pharyngeal fricative sound that doesn't exist in English.
From Hebrew 'ayin' meaning 'eye.' The letter's name comes from its ancient pictograph which resembled an eye, following the acrophonic principle where letters were named after objects that start with their sound.
The letter 'ayin' literally means 'eye' in Hebrew, and ancient peoples would draw it as an actual eye symbol—when you learn letter origins, you're reading ancient visual puns!
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