Definition of "E"

On several occasions, indeed, he did learn E, F, G, H, but by the time he knew them, it was always discovered that he had forgotten A, B, C, and D.

1945 August 17, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter 3, in Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg

Sick Boy brings oot some E. White doves; ah think. It's mental gear. Most Ecstasy hasnae any MDMA in it, it's just likesay, ken, part speed, part acid in its effects . .

1994 , Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, page 156

And I don't quite understand just what this feeling is / But that's okay cause we're all sorted out for E's and wizz

1995, “Sorted For E’s and Wizz”, in Jarvis Cocker (lyrics), Different Class, performed by Pulp

You mentioned you were taking stuff. Did you mean ecstasy? / What else? It’s excellent. I’m not an addict or nothing, and I steer clear of crack and that. People say E is for losers but, hey, I’d never be without some eccy in my bag.

2002, Hugh Mackay, Winter Close, Sydney: Hodder Headline, page 85

In line with this, he is marketed not only as a mental innocent, but as a class primitive, someone who only got an E in A-level art […]

1999, Julian Stallabrass, High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s, Verso, page 25

My results weren’t that great, to be honest. I weren’t right happy with them; I got an E in Maths and that were a surprise, but I did get a B in Technology – that were all right.

a2003, Rick, quoted in Linda MacDowell, Redundant Masculinities?: Employment Change and White Working Class Youth, Blackwell Publishing (2003), page 198

Not really, but perhaps I’d have got an ‘E’ in Tech Drawing no matter how much I’d asserted myself. Maybe Mr. Pinkerton would have seen to it that my exam paper was tampered with. A spot of teacher to student revenge.

2005, S. J. Smith, Joe Public, Virtualbookworm Publishing, page 125

But she didn’t get the bit about my accidental artistic career, “But you can’t draw love. You got an E in your exam. I remember that. You drew that onion that looked like a boil.”

2005, Craig Taylor, Light, Reverb, page 103

The discovery suggests also that the center of the state of E was located in the Suizao corridor in Hubei, not far from the location of E as suggested by ancient geographical works.

2002, The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities‎, page 229

These three bronzes, though clearly modeled on Zhou types, are quite distinctive from the Zhou tradition. They suggest that, although the state of E served as an ally and agent of the Western Zhou state, it probably had a distinctive cultural origin of its own.

2006, Li Feng, Landscape and Power in Early China‎, Cambridge University Press, pages 330–331

A six-character inscription cast inside the bowl records that this gui was made for a nobleman of the E state. Due to gaps in Chinese historical records, the exact history of the state of E is uncertain. Since the E Shu Gui was salvaged from a pile of scrap copper shipped to the Shanghai Foundry from Hubei province, some scholars have inferred that the gui was excavated from Hubei, therefore proving that the E state during the Western Zhou was located in today's Hubei province.

2014, Liu Yang, Cast for Eternity‎, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, page 15