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The acute accent ( ´ ) is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts.

Uses[link]

History[link]

Apex[link]

An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels.

Pitch[link]

Greek[link]

The acute accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it indicated a syllable with a high pitch. In Modern Greek, a stress accent has replaced the pitch accent, and the acute marks the stressed syllable of a word. The Greek name of the accent was oxeîa (Modern Greek oxía) "sharp" or "high", which was calqued into Latin as acūta "sharpened".

Stress[link]

The acute accent marks the stressed vowel of a word in several languages:

• Catalan, where it is used in stressed vowels: é, í, ó, ú.
• Dutch. The acute is used to mark stress (vóórkomen – voorkómen, meaning occur and prevent) or a more closed vowel (hé – hè, equivalent to English hey and heh), where this is not clear from context. Sometimes it is simply used for disambiguation, as in één – een, meaning "one" and "a(n)".
• Galician
• Lakota. For example, kákhi "in that direction", but kakhí "take something to someone back there".
• Leonese, where it is used for marking stress or disambiguation.
• Modern Greek, where it marks the stressed vowel of every polysyllabic word: ά (á), έ (é), ή (í), ί (í), ό (ó), ύ (ý), ώ (ó).
• Occitan, where it is used in stressed vowels: á, é, í, ó, ú.
• Portuguese: á, é, í, ó, ú. It may also indicate height (see below).
• Russian. Stress is irregular in Russian, and in the reference and teaching materials (dictionaries, books for children or foreigners) stress is indicated by an acute accent " ́" above the stressed vowel. The acute accent can be used both in the Cyrillic and sometimes in the romanised text. However, this is not the case for Serbo-Croatian and Macedonian, as these languages have a semi-fixed stress on the second-last and/or third-last syllable, making the use of accents redundant.
• Spanish where it is used on vowels to mark stress in words not following the default stress pattern. Occasionally it is also used to distinguish between homophones. See below.
• Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. The acute accent is used to indicate that a terminal syllable with the vowel e is stressed, and is often written out only when it changes the meaning. For example: armen (first syllable stressed) means "the arm", while armé(e)n means "the army"; ide (first syllable stressed) means "bear's nest", while idé means "idea". Also stress-related are the different spellings of the words en/én and et/ét (the indefinite article and the word "one" in Danish). In this case the acute points out that there is one and only one of the object. This derives from the obsolete spelling(s) een and eet. Some loan-words, mainly from French, are also written with the acute accent, like filé and kafé.
• Welsh word stress usually falls on the penultimate syllable, but one way of indicating stress on a final (short) vowel is through the use of the acute accent. In theory this can be on any vowel: á, é, í, ó, ú, ẃ, or ý, for example, casáu [kaˈsaɨ, kaˈsai] "to hate", ymbarél [əmbaˈrɛl] "umbrella".

Height[link]

The acute accent marks the height of some stressed vowels in various Romance languages.

• To mark high vowels:
  • Catalan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels é [e] (as opposed to è [ɛ]), and ó [o] (as opposed to ò [ɔ]).
  • French. The acute is used only on é. It is known as accent aigu, in contrast to the accent grave which is the accent sloped the other way. It distinguishes é [e] from è [ɛ], ê [ɛ], and e [ə]. Unlike in other Romance languages, the accent marks do not imply stress in French.
  • Italian. The acute accent (sometimes called accento chiuso, "close accent" in Italian) is compulsory only in words of more than one syllable stressed on their final vowel (and a few other words). Words ending in stressed -o are never marked with an acute accent (ó), but with a grave accent (ò). Therefore, only é and è are normally contrasted, typically in words ending in -ché, such as perché ("why/because"); in the conjugated copula è ("is"); in ambiguous monosyllables such as né ('neither') vs. ne ('of it') and sé ('itself') vs. se ('if'); and some verb forms, e.g. poté ("he/she/it could" (past tense)). The symbol ó can be used in the body of a word for disambiguation, for instance between bótte ("barrel") and bòtte ("beating"), though this is not mandatory: in fact standar Italian keyboards lack a dedicated ó key.
  • Occitan. The acute marks the quality of the vowels é [e] (as opposed to è [ɛ]), ó [u] (as opposed to ò [ɔ]) and á [ɔ/e] (as opposed to à [a]).
• To mark low vowels:
  • Portuguese. The vowels á, é, ó, are stressed low vowels, in opposition to â, ê, ô which are stressed high vowels. However, the accent is only used in words whose stressed syllable is in an unpredictable location within the word: where the location of the stressed syllable is predictable, no accent is used, and the height of the stressed vowel cannot then usually be determined solely from the word's spelling.

Length[link]

The acute accent marks long vowels in several languages:

• Classical Latin
• Czech: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý are the long versions of a, e, i, o, u, y. To indicate a long u in the middle or at the end of a word, a kroužek (ring) is used instead, to form ů.
• Hungarian: á, é, í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels a, e, i, o, u (the former two also implying a change in quality, see below), while ő, ű (see double acute accent) are the long equivalents of ö, ü.
• Irish: á, é, í, ó, ú are the long equivalents of the vowels a, e, i, o, u. The accent is known as a síneadh fada /ˌʃiːnʲə ˈfadˠə/ (length accent), usually abbreviated to fada.
• Old Norse: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý are the long versions of a, e, i, o, u, y. Sometimes ⟨ǿ⟩ is used as the long version of ⟨ø⟩, but ⟨œ⟩ is used more often. Sometimes the short-lived Old Icelandic long ⟨ǫ⟩ (also written ⟨ö⟩) is written using an acute-accented form, ⟨ǫ́⟩, or a version with a macron, ⟨ǭ⟩, but more often it is not distinguished from ⟨á⟩, from which it is derived by u-mutation.
• Slovak. This language has in addition to the long vowels á, é, í, ó, ú and ý two more "long vowels" (which are consonants in the alphabet, but vowels in terms of their function): ŕ and ĺ, which are pronounced just like ordinary syllabic r and l, only longer.
• Arabic and Persian: á, í, ú were used in western transliteration of Islamic language texts from the 18th to early 20th centuries. Representing the long vowels, they are typically transcribed with a macron today.

The acute accent marks short vowels in:

• Ligurian (Romance language). In the official orthography, é is used for the short [e], and ó is used for the short [u] sound.

Palatalization[link]

A graphically similar, but not identical, mark is indicative of a palatalized sound in several languages.

In Polish, such a mark is known as a kreska (English: stroke) and is an integral part of several letters: four consonants and one vowel. When appearing in consonants, it indicates palatalization, similar to the use of the háček in Czech and other Slavic languages (e.g. sześć [ˈʂɛɕtɕ] "six"). However, in contrast to the háček which is usually used for postalveolar consonants, the kreska denotes alveolo-palatal consonants. In traditional Polish typography, the kreska is more nearly vertical than the acute accent, and placed slightly right of center.^[1] A similar rule applies to the Belarusian Latin alphabet Lacinka. However, for computer use, Unicode conflates the codepoints for these letters with those of the accented Latin letters of similar appearance.

In Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian the letter ć is used to represent a palatalized t.

In the romanization of Macedonian, ǵ and ḱ represent the Cyrillic letters ѓ and ќ, which stand for palatal or alveolo-palatal consonants, though gj and kj (or đ and ć) are more commonly used for this purpose. The same two letters are used to transcribe the postulated Proto-Indo-European phonemes /ɡʲ/ and /kʲ/.

Tone[link]

In the Quốc Ngữ system for Vietnamese and the Pinyin romanization for Mandarin Chinese, the acute accent indicates a rising tone. In Mandarin, the alternative to the acute accent is the number 2 after the syllable: lái = lai2.

In African languages and Athabaskan languages, it frequently marks a high tone, e.g., Yoruba apá 'arm', Nobiin féntí 'sweet date', Ekoti kaláwa 'boat', Navajo t’áá 'just'.

The acute accent is used in Croatian dictionaries and linguistic publications to indicate a high-rising accent. It is not used in everyday writing.

Disambiguation[link]

The acute accent is used to disambiguate certain words which would otherwise be homographs in the following languages:

• Danish. Examples: én "one" vs. en "a/an"; fór "went" vs. for "for"; véd "know(s)" vs. ved "by"; gǿr "bark(s)" vs. gør "do(es)"; dǿr "die(s)" vs. dør "door"; allé "alley" vs. alle "everybody".
  Furthermore, it is also used for the imperative form of verbs ending in -ere, which lose their final e and might be mistaken for plurals of a noun (which most often end in -er): analysér is the imperative form of at analysere "to analyse", analyser is "analyses", plural of the noun analyse "analysis". Using an acute accent is always optional, never required.
• Modern Greek. Although all polysyllabic words have an acute accent on the stressed syllable, in monosyllabic words the presence or absence of an accent may disambiguate. The most common case is η, the feminine definite article ("the"), versus ή, meaning "or". Other cases include που ("who"/"which") versus πού ("where") and πως ("that", as in "he told me that...") versus πώς ("how").
• Norwegian. It is used to indicate stress on a vowel otherwise not expected to have stress. Most words are stressed on the first syllable and diacritical marks are rarely used. Although incorrect, it is frequently used to mark the imperative form of verbs ending in -ere as it is in Danish: kontrollér is the imperative form of "to control", kontroller is the noun "controls". The simple past of the verb å fare, "to travel", can optionally be written fór, to distinguish it from for (preposition "for" as in English), fôr "feed" n./"lining", or fòr (only in Nynorsk) "narrow ditch, trail by plow (all the diacritics in these examples are optional^[2]).
• Spanish. Covers various question word / relative pronoun pairs where the first is stressed and the second is a clitic, such as cómo (interrogative "how") and como (non-interrogative "how", comparative "like", "I eat"^[3]), differentiates qué (what) from que (that), dónde and donde "where", and some other words such as tú "you" and tu "your," té "tea" and te "you" (direct/indirect object), él "he/him" and el ("the", masculine). This usage of the acute accent is called acento diacrítico.
• Russian. Acute accent (technically, a stress mark) may be used to disambiguate both between minimal pairs, such as за́мок (read as zámak, means "castle") and замо́к (read as zamok, means "padlock"), and between question words and relative pronouns such as что ("what", stressed, or "that", unstressed), similarly to Spanish. Usually, though, meaning is determined by context and no stress mark is written. The same rules apply to Ukrainian, Rusyn, Belarusian and Bulgarian.

Emphasis[link]

In Dutch, the acute accent can also be used to emphasize an individual word within a sentence. For example, Dit is ónze auto, niet die van jullie, "This is our car, not yours." In this example, ónze is merely an emphasized form of onze. Also in family names like Piét, Piél, Plusjé, Hofsté.

In Danish, the acute accent can also be used for emphasis, especially on the word der (there), as in Der kan ikke være mange mennesker dér, meaning "There can't be many people there" or Dér skal vi hen meaning "That's where we're going".

Letter extension[link]

• In Faroese, the acute accent is used on five of the vowels (a, i, o, u and y), but these letters, á, í, ó, ú and ý are considered separate letters with separate pronunciations.

  á: long [ɔa], short [ɔ] and before [a]: [õ]

  í/ý: long [ʊiː], short [ʊi]

  ó: long [ɔu], [ɛu] or [œu], short: [œ], except Suðuroy: [ɔ]

  When ó is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced [ɛ], except in Suðuroy where it is [ɔ]

  ú: long [ʉu], short [ʏ]

  When ú is followed by the skerping -gv, it is pronounced [ɪ]

• In Hungarian, the acute accent marks a difference in quality on two vowels, apart from vowel length:

  The (short) vowel a is open back rounded (ɒ), but á is open front unrounded (a) (and long).

  Similarly, the (short) vowel e is open-mid front unrounded (ɛ), while (long) é is close-mid front unrounded (e).

  Despite this difference, these two pairs are arranged as equal in collation, just like the other pairs (see above) that only differ in length.

• In Icelandic the acute accent is used on all 6 of the vowels (a, e, i, o, u and y), and, like in Faroese, these are considered separate letters.
  

  

  A sample extract of Icelandic.

  á: [au(ː)]

  é: long [jeɛː], short [jɛ]

  í/ý: [i(ː)]

  ó: [ou(ː)]

  ú: [u(ː)]

  All can be either short or long, but note that the pronunciation of é is not the same short and long.

  Etymologically, vowels with an acute accent in these languages correspond to their Old Norse counterparts, which were long vowels but in many cases have become diphthongs. The only exception is é, which in Faroese has become æ.

• In Polish, the acute on "ó" indicates a pronunciation change into [u], and historically it was used to indicate a long vowel.
• In Turkmen, the letter Ý is a consonant: [j].

Other uses[link]

• Many Norwegian words of French origin retain an acute accent, such as allé, kafé, idé, komité. Popular usage can be sketchy and often neglects the accent, or results in the grave accent, erroneously being used in its place. Likewise, in Swedish, the acute accent is used only for the letter e, mostly in words of French origin and in some names. It is used both to indicate a change in vowel quantity as well as quality and that the stress should be on this, normally unstressed, syllable. Examples include café ("café") and resumé ("résumé", noun). There are two pairs of homographs that are differentiated only by the accent: armé ("army") versus arme ("poor; pitiful", masculine gender) and idé ("idea") versus ide ("winter quarters").
• Ǵǵ is used in Pashto in the Latin alphabet, equivalent to ږ‎.
• In Northern Sámi, an acute accent was placed over the corresponding Latin letter to represent the letters peculiar to this language (Áá, Čč, Đđ, Ŋŋ, Šš, Ŧŧ, Žž) when typing when there was no way of entering these letters correctly otherwise.^[4]
• In transliterating texts written in Cuneiform, an acute accent over the vowel indicates that the original sign is the second representing that value in the canonical lists. Thus su is used to transliterate the first sign with the phonetic value /su/, while sú transliterates the second sign with the value /su/.
• In some Basque texts predating Standard Basque, the letters r and l carry acute accents (an invention by Sabino Arana^[5]), which are otherwise indicated by double letters. In such cases, ŕ is used to represent rr (a trilled r, this spelling is used only internally in words, to differentiate between -r-, an alveolar tap–in Basque /r/ in word-final positions is always trilled) and ĺ for ll (a palatalized /l/).

English[link]

As with other diacritical marks, a number of loanwords are sometimes spelled in English with an acute accent used in the original language: these include attaché, blasé, canapé, cliché, communiqué, café, décor, déjà vu, détente, élite, entrée, exposé, mêlée, fiancé, fiancée, papier-mâché, passé, pâté, piqué, plié, repoussé, résumé, risqué, sauté, roué, séance, naïveté, toupée and touché. Retention of the accent is common only in the French ending é or ée, as in these examples, where its absence would tend to suggest a different pronunciation. Thus the French word résumé is commonly seen in English as resumé, with only one accent (but also with both or none).

Acute accents are sometimes added to loanwords where a final e is not silent, for example, maté from Spanish mate, the Maldivian capital Malé, saké, and Pokémon from the Japanese compound for pocket monster, the last three from languages which do not use the Roman alphabet, and where transcriptions do not normally use acute accents.

For foreign terms used in English that have not been assimilated into English or are not in general English usage, italics are generally used with the appropriate accents: for example, coup d'état, pièce de résistance, crème brûlée and ancien régime.

Accents are sometimes also used for poetic purposes, to indicate an unusual pronunciation: for example, spelling the word picked (normally [pɪkt]) as pickéd^{[citation needed]} to indicate the pronunciation [ˈpɪkɪd]. The grave accent is more usually used for this purpose.

Technical notes[link]

The ISO-8859-1 and Windows-1252 character encoding include the letters á, é, í, ó, ú, ý, and their respective capital forms. Dozens more letters with the acute accent are available in Unicode.

Microsoft Windows[link]

On Windows computers, letters with acute accents can be created by holding down the alt key and typing in a three-number code on the number pad to the right of the keyboard before releasing the Alt key. Before the appearance of Spanish keyboards, Spanish speakers had to learn these codes if they wanted to be able to write acute accents, though some preferred using the Microsoft Word spell checker to add the accent for them. Some young computer users got in the habit of not writing accented letters at all.^{[citation needed]} The codes (which come from the IBM PC encoding) are:

• 160 for á
• 130 for é
• 161 for í
• 162 for ó
• 163 for ú

On a non-US Keyboard layout, these letters can also be made by holding Ctrl+Alt (or Alt Gr) and the desired letter.^{[citation needed]}

Microsoft Office[link]

To input an accented letter in a Microsoft Office software (Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, etc.), hold the Ctrl key, press the apostrophe (') key once, release the Ctrl key, and then press the desired letter.

Macintosh OS X[link]

On a Macintosh computer, an acute accent is placed on a vowel by pressing Option-e and then the vowel, which can also be capitalised; for example, á is formed by pressing Option-e and then 'a', and Á is formed by pressing Option-e and then Shift-a.

Keyboards[link]

Because keyboards have only a limited number of keys, English keyboards do not have keys for accented characters. The concept of dead key, a key that modified the meaning of the next key press, was developed to overcome this problem. This acute accent key was already present on typewriters where it typed the accent without moving the carriage, so a normal letter could be written on the same place.

Internet[link]

Some sites, such as Wikipedia or the Alta Vista automatic translator^[6] allow inserting such symbols by clicking on a link in a box.

See also[link]

• Acute (phonetics)
• Apex (diacritic)
• Circumflex accent
• Double acute accent
• Grave accent

Notes[link]

External links[link]

Look up acute accent in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up ´ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up á, ć, é, or í in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up ĺ, ḿ, or ó in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Diacritics Project – All you need to design a font with correct accents
• Keyboard Help – Learn how to create world language accent marks and other diacriticals on a computer

Omar Devone Little is a fictional character on the HBO drama The Wire, portrayed by Michael K. Williams. Omar is a renowned stick-up man who lives by a strict moral code and never deviates from his rules, foremost of which is that he never robs or menaces people who are not involved in "the game". Omar, who is gay, has had three partners on the show. Omar makes a point of disliking profanity; he disapproves when his partners curse, and rarely does so himself.

Biography[link]

Omar was orphaned at a young age, and raised by his grandmother Josephine, who is largely responsible for his strict moral code, despite his criminal occupation. He attended Edmondson High School in West Baltimore, a few years behind Bunk Moreland. For more than ten years, Omar has made his living holding up drug dealers, and staying alive "one day at a time." He is legendary around Baltimore for his characteristic shotgun, trench coat, facial scar, and whistling "The Farmer in the Dell", or "A Hunting We Will Go" when stalking the streets. Every time people see or hear him coming they run, even the children. He repeatedly demonstrates exceptional skill at surveillance and as a stick-up man and shooter, further contributing to his feared status as an efficient professional. He is highly intelligent and cunning, consistently executing well-laid plans, anticipating moves, and outsmarting his adversaries. Once a month, he accompanies his elderly grandmother to church. He has a brother, "No Heart" Anthony, who is incarcerated for a jewelry store robbery in the early '90s. Omar has a fondness for Newport cigarettes and Honey Nut Cheerios, though several episodes indicated that he often had difficulty in locating the latter. He often carries a shotgun or large caliber handguns in .44 Magnum (Desert Eagle or Colt Anaconda), .45 ACP semi-automatics, and .50 Action Express.

Season 1[link]

After Omar, his boyfriend Brandon, and John Bailey rob a stash house, Avon Barksdale puts out a contract on the trio (doubling the reward once he discovers Omar is gay). Bailey is killed, and Brandon is tortured, mutilated, and killed for keeping silent on Omar's whereabouts. He is then left in a public place so as to be seen and quickly found. In response, Omar, emotionally distraught, cooperates with Detectives Jimmy McNulty and Bunk Moreland, providing key information leading to the arrest of Barksdale's soldier Bird, and agrees to be a witness against him at his trial (though it is unlikely that Omar was an actual witness to the crime). While meeting with the police, he observes information which he uses to exact further revenge against the Barksdale Organization, killing Stinkum and wounding Wee-Bey Brice.

Omar even gets a shot at Barksdale himself, by giving stolen drugs to Eastside drug kingpin Proposition Joe for Avon's pager number. He tails Avon to Orlando's strip club, pages him and waits for him to emerge into the open. Avon narrowly escapes when Wee-Bey arrives and shoots Omar in the shoulder. Afterward, Stringer Bell offers Omar a truce, planning to kill him when he relaxes his guard. Omar realizes Stringer's duplicity and leaves town, temporarily relocating to New York City. In the last scene of the first season, he is seen robbing a New York drug dealer, merely saying that it's "all in the game, yo. All in the game."

Season 2[link]

Omar returns to Baltimore with a new boyfriend, Dante. He quickly returns to his old business, targeting the Barksdales exclusively, and connects with Tosha and Kimmy, stick-up artistes who join his crew.

Omar provides false testimony against Bird in open court as he had promised to do. Unabashed and unapologetic about who he is, he wins over the jury with his wit; when Barksdale attorney Maurice Levy calls him a parasite who thrives on the drug trade, Omar points out that Levy is essentially the same thing. In the end, the jury accepts Omar's testimony, and Bird is sent to prison for life. Assistant State's Attorney Ilene Nathan promises Omar a favor as a thank you for his testimony. While waiting to be called to the witness stand, Omar helps the bailiff with a crossword puzzle clue, explaining that the Greek god of war is called Ares. He mentions that he was fascinated by Greek mythology in middle school, implying that he was a precocious and intelligent student as a youth.

Around this time, as Stringer Bell extends his control over the Barksdale operation, Avon hires Brother Mouzone from New York as new muscle. With the threat to his secret takeover apparent, Stringer arranges a meeting through Proposition Joe and Omar's advisor and confidant Butchie, where Stringer tells Omar that Mouzone was the one who had tortured and killed Brandon. Omar finds Mouzone and shoots him once, but when Mouzone reveals that Omar had been given false information, Omar realizes he has been duped and lets Mouzone live, even calling the paramedics for him. He redirects his murderous intent at Stringer himself.^[1][2]

Season 3[link]

Omar and his crew continue robbing Barksdale stash houses, even though they are more difficult and riskier than other potential targets. Tosha is killed during a raid on a Barksdale house, and Omar contemplates giving up his war against the Barksdale organization. Detective Bunk Moreland, investigating the deaths, makes Omar feel further guilt over the incident, giving a speech about how the neighborhood used to be closer-knit and with less violence. "And now all we got are bodies. And predatory motherfuckers like you." Bunk mentions that when he went to the scene he found children arguing about whose turn it was "to be Omar." Omar provides him with a lost police pistol as a way of making amends.

Under orders from Stringer Bell, two of Avon's soldiers open fire on Omar while he is taking his grandmother to church. Omar forces her into a taxi, but she loses her best hat in the gunfire. This blatant violation of the longstanding "Sunday truce" between rival gangs, combined with the risk Omar's grandmother was put in during the incident, leads Omar to re-dedicate himself to war with the Barksdales, though Kimmy opts out. Avon, outraged at Stringer, forces the men responsible for the attack to buy Omar's grandmother a new hat.

Meanwhile, Brother Mouzone captures Dante, and forces him to reveal Omar's hiding place. Dante gives in, in contrast with Brandon, who never cracked. Mouzone suggests an alliance against Stringer. Together, Omar and Mouzone ambush Stringer during a meeting with Andy Krawczyk and murder him. Brother Mouzone sets Dante free and returns to New York, while Omar is tasked with disposing of Mouzone's gun, as well as the shotgun that killed Stringer. Both weapons are later thrown into the harbor. Omar is shown to be suspicious of the severity of Dante's injuries and his release by Mouzone is the last time he is seen; it is implied that Omar left him for giving him up so easily.

Season 4[link]

Omar feels dissatisfied with how easy work has become after the collapse of the Barksdale organization and worries that pursuing easy thefts would make him soft, ("How you expect to run with the wolves come night when you spend all day sparring with the puppies") so he and new boyfriend Renaldo pull a robbery of one of Marlo Stanfield's dealers, Old Face Andre, who runs a westside corner convenience store that was actually a drug front. At Proposition Joe's suggestion, they rob a poker game, not knowing that Marlo Stanfield was one of the men at the game. While committing the robbery, Omar makes a point to take a large ring from Marlo, who had earlier taken the same ring from Old Face Andre as a debt for money owed. Though Marlo vows revenge, his right hand man Chris Partlow convinces him to take a subtler approach. Chris shoots an innocent woman during a staged robbery at Old Face Andre's store and instructs Andre to call the police and falsely implicate Omar as the culprit. Omar is subsequently jailed. During the arrest, he is robbed by Officer Eddie Walker, who takes the ring that Omar had stolen from Marlo. Before Omar is taken away in a police van, he is questioned by Officer Jimmy McNulty, who thought it out of character for Omar to have murdered an ordinary citizen not involved in the drug trade. While imprisoned in Baltimore City's Central Booking, Omar is recognized by other inmates he'd previously robbed, a number of whom want to kill him for the bounty that had been placed on his head. In retaliation for an attempt on his life, he brutally stabs an adversary in the rectum as a means of warning the other inmates not to attack him.

Omar reaches out to Detective Bunk Moreland for help. Omar convinces Bunk that he would never kill a "citizen". After having Omar transferred to a safer prison in Harford County (calling in the favor from Ilene Nathan), Bunk manages to prove that Old Face Andre had lied. The charge against Omar is dropped and Bunk transports him out of Harford County with a warning: no more murders of anyone. Bunk threatens to bring up the unsolved murders at Omar's hands that he knew about, such as Stringer Bell, Stinkum Artis, or Tosha if Omar was caught killing anyone else.

Omar learns that Marlo had framed him and was the one he had robbed at the card game. Omar demands that Proposition Joe help him rob Marlo, and Joe agrees to alert Omar when Joe's soldier Cheese was dropping off Marlo's package. Omar orchestrates an elaborate and successful hijacking of Joe's entire shipment of heroin as it enters port. As he had no wish to sell drugs on the street, he sells the heroin back to Proposition Joe. Although the heist makes Omar a lot of money, it has all of the drug kingpins ready to put a contract on his head.

Season 5[link]

Omar retires with Renaldo following the heist and moves to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Marlo Stanfield has Butchie tortured and killed, seeking revenge on Omar and to draw him out of hiding.^[3] Word reaches Omar and he returns to Baltimore to punish those responsible. Omar ambushes Slim Charles and confronts him. Omar knows that Slim Charles' employer "Proposition Joe" Stewart knew of his connection to Butchie and believes Proposition Joe may have been responsible. Slim Charles is able to convince Omar of Proposition Joe's innocence and Omar targets Stanfield. Along with Butchie's friend Donnie, Omar decides to go after Stanfield's people as Stanfield himself has gone into hiding and Omar targets Monk.^[3] Stanfield's soldiers spot Omar outside of Monk's apartment and bait Omar and Donnie into an ambush. Once inside they are attacked by Chris Partlow, Snoop, Michael Lee, and O-Dog. During the shootout, O-Dog is wounded in the leg and Donnie killed by a gunshot to the head. Out of bullets, Omar is forced to jump from the fourth-story window, injuring his leg in the process.

He continues his mission around the city in search of Marlo with a makeshift crutch. He terrorizes and robs many of Marlo's corners and shoots or kills several members of Stanfield's crew including Savino Bratton. All the while, Omar calls for Marlo to meet him on the streets. During "Clarifications," a young boy from Michael's crew, Kenard, follows Omar to a Korean-owned convenience store. Omar sees Kenard walk in, but seeing just a little boy, pays no attention to him. Kenard shoots Omar in the side of the head, killing him. This brings closure to some of the foreshadowing in Season 3, as Kenard was the young boy Bunk witnessed imitating Omar at the Barksdale stash house shootout.

Legacy[link]

News of Omar's death is received with mild amusement and indifference by various characters. Bunk Moreland initially shows some sympathy, which he brushes aside when he learns Omar was once again "on the hunt". McNulty and Freamon react with mere curious interest and instead focus on a lead on their case found on Omar's body. The newspaper staff drop any mention of the incident for lack of printing space. In his final appearance, an employee at the morgue realizes the identification tag on Omar's body has been accidentally switched with that of the white deceased male on the neighboring table and corrects the error by swapping the tags. The scenes signal the unceremonious transition of Omar from a mythical figure into a crime statistic in the course of one day. However, various people in the street were shown to increasingly exaggerate the details of his shooting in order to glorify his death.

Prequels[link]

A brief prequel released before season five and on the season five DVD set features a young Omar, his brother Anthony, and an unidentified older boy planning and executing a robbery of a man at a bus stop in 1985 Baltimore. Even as a young boy, Omar shows remarkable intelligence, morality, and force of character by first questioning the value of robbing the man and then compelling the unidentified older boy (at gunpoint) to return the money. Anthony expresses tired amusement at Omar's actions, demonstrating his familiarity with his brother's forceful personality. Omar is shown with his characteristic facial scar, indicating that he somehow received it as a child.

At the end of this segment, the unidentified boy tells Anthony that his brother is not "cut out" for their line of work, an ironic foreshadowing of what would happen to Anthony some years later. After bungling a jewelry store heist, Anthony was pursued by police. Apparently sensing he was about to be caught, and unwilling to do hard time, Anthony put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger. He survives the suicide attempt, however; only receiving a contact wound. After this incident, he earned the derisive nickname "No Heart" Anthony.

Production[link]

Casting[link]

Michael K. Williams received the part of Omar after only a single audition. Williams has stated that he pursued the role because he felt it would make him stand out from other African Americans from Brooklyn with acting talent because of its contradictory nature.^[4]

Williams expressed that his relationship with and love of off-broadway New York theatres, such as the National Black Theater in Harlem gave him the skill set needed for his portrayal of Omar; in particular using the Meisner technique to create Omar from the ground up, immersing himself by researching details of inner city Baltimore. The role presented a particular challenge as it was the first major recurring television character he had played.^[5]

Origins[link]

David Simon has said that Omar is based on Shorty Boyd, Donnie Andrews, Ferdinand Harvin, Billy Outlaw and Anthony Hollie, Baltimore stickup men between the 1980s and early 2000s who robbed drug dealers.^[6] Donnie Andrews later reformed, is married, and now helps troubled youths.^[7] In season 4 of The Wire Andrews plays one of the two men Butchie sends to help Omar in prison, in the episodes "Margin of Error" and "Unto Others" and Omar later meets up with him at Blind Butchie's in "That's Got His Own" while planning the big drug robbery.

Omar admits to an interest in Greek mythology in the season two episode "All Prologue".^[8] Omar's nascent love of Greek mythology has some truth in real life; according to a passage The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood, a non-fiction book written by David Simon and Ed Burns, children in Baltimore schools pay little attention to most classes and stories (as seen in the fourth season of The Wire), but are often interested by and appreciative of Greek mythology.^[9]

Reception[link]

For his portrayal of Omar, Michael K. Williams was named by USA Today as one of ten reasons they still love television. The character was praised for his uniqueness in the stale landscape of TV crime dramas and for the wit and humor that Williams brought to the portrayal.^[10] Other commentators applauded the many dimensions of the character with his appearances in various story lines as "...a sawed-off shotgun toting terror, a vulnerable jailbird whose life lies in the balance, and a double crossing mastermind who outsmarts Baltimore’s biggest drug dealers time and time again."^[5] Omar was named as one of the first season's richest characters, not unlike the Robin Hood of Baltimore's west side projects, although his contradictory nature was questioned as a little too strange.^[11] The Baltimore City Paper named the character one of their top ten reasons not to cancel the show and called him "arguably the show’s single greatest achievement."^[12]

Williams has stated that he feels that the character is well liked because of his honesty, lack of materialism, individuality and his adherence to his strict code.^[4] In January 2008 then-presidential candidate Barack Obama told the Las Vegas Sun that Omar was his favorite character on The Wire (which, in turn, is his favorite television show), adding, “That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”^[13]

References[link]