The Phoenician letter name ṭēth may mean "spinning wheel"[2] pictured as (compare Hebrew root ט-ו-י (ṭ-w-y) meaning 'spinning' (a thread) which begins with Teth). According to another hypothesis (Brian Colless[citation needed]), the letter possibly continues a Middle Bronze Age glyph named ṭab 'good', Aramaic טַב 'tav', Hebrew טוב 'tov', Syriac ܛܒܐ 'tava', modern Arabic طَيّب 'ṭayyib', all of identical meaning, whose picture is based on the Nefer 'good' hieroglyph common in ancient Egyptian names (e.g. Nefertiti):
Jewish scripture books about the "holy letters" from the 10th century onward discuss the connection or origin of the letter Teth with the word tov "good".
This was especially emphasized ever since the late 1600s after the Baal Shem Tov became influential, since the letter Teth was in his Acronym standing for Tov, and goodness was part of his philosophy.
The acrostic poems of the Bible use 'Tov' to represent the letter (e.g. Psalm 119:65-72).
In Modern Hebrew, Tet represents a voiceless alveolar plosive/t/, and is therefore usually homophonic with the abjad's final letter, Tav ת. However, Tet can be pharyngealized to produce [tˤ] in traditional Temani and Sephardi pronunciation. [tˤ] is also probably the pronunciation in Biblical Hebrew.
Significance
In gematria, Tet represents the number nine. When followed by an apostrophe, it means 9,000. The most common example of this usage is in the numbers of the Hebrew years (e.g., ט'תשנד in numbers would be the date 9754).
As well, in gematria, the number 15 is written with Tet and Vav, (9+6) to avoid the normal construction Yud and Hei (10+5) which spells a name of God. Similarly, 16 is written with Tet and Zayin (9+7) instead of Yud and Vav (10+6) to avoid spelling part of the Tetragrammaton.
A symbol similar to the Phoenician teth is used for the tensor product, as , but this is presumably an independent development, by modification of the multiplication sign ×. The Hebrew ט is also visually similar to the letter Ʋ.
