First letter of the Spanish alphabet. It is pronounced as the a in alarm.

Ten pesos. -A coalesces with the masculine article el, forming al: Al rey, to the king. This masculine article is also used before the infinitive form of verbs taken substantively: Al amanecer, at the break of day. John. -It also serves to express distributive numbers: A perdiz por barba, a partridge a head. -Before the infinitive form, and at the beginning of a sentence, it sometimes has a conditional sense: A decir verdad, to tell the truth. -This preposition governs almost all parts of speech, whether nouns, adjectives, pronouns, or verbs: A los hombres, to me -It points out the person in whom the action of the verb terminates, and then is placed before the accusative or objective case, as Amo a Pedro, I love Peter. -A is still used in some phrases instead of por, en, sin, para, and la; and in obsolete writings for con and de. -In composition it serves to convert substantives and adjectives into verbs, as abocar from boca, ablandar from blando. Formerly it was prefixed to many words, as abajar, amatar, etc.; but being redundant, these words are now written bajar, matar, etc. -A is frequently used adverbially, as A deshora, unseasonably.