In Old Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 a sicilicus is a diacritical mark, , like a laterally inverted C (Ɔ) placed above a letter and evidently deriving its name from its shape like a little sickle

Sickle

A sickle is a hand-held agricultural tool with a variously curved blade typically used for harvesting grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock . Sickles have also been used as weapons, either in their original form or in various derivations.The diversity of sickles that...

 (which is sicilis in Latin). The ancient sources say that during the time of the Republic

Roman Republic

The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...

 it was placed above a geminate consonant to indicate that the consonant counted twice, although there is hardly any epigraphic and paleographic evidence available from such an early time. When such geminate consonants began to be represented during classical times by writing the letter twice, the sicilicus naturally fell into disuse. Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as "Plautus", was a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature. He wrote Palliata comoedia, the genre devised by the innovator of Latin literature, Livius Andronicus...

 appears to allude to the sicilicus in the prologue to Menaechmi

Menaechmi

Menaechmi, a Latin-language play, is often considered Plautus' greatest play. The title is sometimes translated as The Brothers Menaechmus or The Two Menaechmuses....

.

In Unicode, it is encoded as .

See also

• Open O
  Open O
  Open o is a letter of the extended Latin alphabet. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, it represents the open-mid back rounded vowel...
  
  , although this is a full letter, and not a diacritic placed above a letter
• Antisigma, although this is a full letter, and not a diacritic placed above a letter
• Apex (diacritic)
  Apex (diacritic)
  In written Latin, the apex is a mark roughly with the shape of an acute accent which is placed over vowels to indicate that they are long.The shape and length of the apex can vary, sometimes within a single inscription...
  
  , used for long vowels instead of long consonants
• Apostrophe
  Apostrophe
  The apostrophe is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritic mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet or certain other alphabets...
  
  , whose shape is derived from it
• Comma (punctuation)
  Comma (punctuation)
  The comma is a punctuation mark. It has the same shape as an apostrophe or single closing quotation mark in many typefaces, but it differs from them in being placed on the baseline of the text. Some typefaces render it as a small line, slightly curved or straight but inclined from the vertical, or...
  
  , whose shape is similar
• Latin spelling and pronunciation
  Latin spelling and pronunciation
  Latin spelling or orthography refers to the spelling of Latin words written in the scripts of all historical phases of Latin from Old Latin to the present. They all use some phase of the same alphabet even though conventional spellings may vary from phase to phase...