SHAPE: Consistent shape in all ancient cities of the Western-Eastern greek alphabet groups.

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SOUND: SOUND: Today's two /k/ utterances are: 1) palatal (oυρανικό) [c] Tongue near soft palate. It occurs before /e/ and /i/ (in the ancient times also before /a/). 2) velar (υπερωικό) [k] the back of the tongue on palate. Occurs in all other surroundings. This distinction was present in ancient times too. In early greek alphabets (before classical times) two symbols were used: K (kappa) for [c] occurred before /i/ /e/ and /a/ sounds. (koppa) for [k] occurred before /o/ and /y/ sounds.

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NAME: ETYMOLOGY: From northsemitic (phoenician): kaph = palm of the hand.
NAME: SPELLING: Its spelling with double pi is not etymologically explained. Probably they just liked to write it as κάππα rather than κάπα

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COMBINATIONS: Note that when preceded by gamma, its pronunciation is affected: ΓK [g] / [ɟ] or [ŋg] / [ŋɟ] or rare [nk].
DOUBLED: sometimes double occurrence within a word. <κκ> was pronounced until the middle times as [kk]. Not pronounced as double in modern greek.

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MORE GREEK WORDS STARTING WITH Kappa
•κακό=bad - caco(phony) •κάλλoς=beauty - calli(graphy) •κίνησις=movement - cinemato(graph) •κράτoς=state/power - (auto)cracy •κρίσις= ability to rationally judge - crisis, κριτικό= critical