ss

Symbol

 * 1)  Apothecary symbol for half.
 * 1)  Apothecary symbol for half.

Interjection

 * 1) sss the hiss of a snake or other reptile

Symbol

 * 1) Sometimes used to replace the letter ß, especially when this key or character is not available. It was also the only official way of writing a capital ß, until ẞ was officially adopted by the Council for German Orthography in June 2017.

Usage notes
In alphabetic ordering, the letter ß is equivalent to the string ss (formerly sz), so is sorted between  and, immediately after the alphabetically equivalent. The letter is never used in Swiss or Liechtenstein German, where it is always replaced by ss. Furthermore, ß was unique among the letters of the Latin alphabet as there was no capital form until ẞ was adopted in June 2017; in all-caps, all instances of ß were officially replaced by SS. However, not every instance of SS can be substituted back into ß.

Since the orthography reform from 1996, the letter ß is used only after long vowels and diphthongs. Before 1996, ß could also occur after short vowels at the end of a word or before a consonant. A rather large number of words that used to be spelled with ß ia now spelled with ss (for example, daß has become dass).