3

A West Arabic numeral, ultimately from Indic numerals (compare Devanagari ३), from a cursive form of three lines to represent the number three. See 3 § Evolution of the Arabic digit for more.

3 (prev 2, next 4)

1. The cardinal number three.
2. A digit in the decimal system of numbering, as well as octal, and hexadecimal.
3. (superscript) The cube of a number or a unit.

   m³ stands for cubic meter.

4. (phonetics, often superscript) the pitch of a tone, perhaps most commonly mid-pitch, but it may instead be high or low depending on local convention (e.g. the highest or lowest pitch if only the numbers 1–3 are used)

   Synonyms: ˥, ˦, ˧, ˨, ˩, depending on other values

5. (phonetics, Sinosphere, often superscript) tone number 3, typically identified with dark rising yin shang (陰上). May be identified with departing qu tone (去) if the yin–yang distinction is not made.

   Synonyms: ꜂, ꜄

The following are equivalent forms as digits:

The following are only equivalent as representations of the cardinal number:

• (Arabic digits): 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Other representations of 3:

M2 is used to represent three as the second Mersenne prime.

3 (plural 3s)

1. (sports, skateboarding, snowboarding, skiing) Clipping of 360. (360° spin)

3

1. vehicle

3

1. Alternative transliteration of ꜣ.

³

1. (linguistics, superscript) Used after an isolated affix or clitic to indicate that it has three variant forms, dependent on the vowel harmony of the preceding stem or word.

This is usually used in two situations:

• When an affix or clitic varies between using the diphthongs ⟨ай⟩, ⟨ой⟩ and ⟨эй⟩, which occurs due to the fact that ⟨өй⟩ is not used in Mongolian (with ⟨эй⟩ being used where it would otherwise occur).
• When an affix or clitic varies between using the iotated vowels ⟨я⟩, ⟨ё⟩ and ⟨е⟩, as ⟨е⟩ is used in both ө-harmonic and э-harmonic terms.

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