Dictionary of Meaning

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W

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W is the twenty-third letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is double-u. The earliest form of the letter W was a doubled V used in the 7th century by the earliest writers of Old English language; it is from this digraph that the modern name "double U" comes. This digraph was not extensively used, the sound usually being represented instead by the Old English language; it is from this digraph that the modern name "double U" comes. This digraph was not extensively used, the sound usually being represented instead by the runic_wynn (&

503;), but W gained popularity after the Norman Conquest of England|Norman Conquest, and by 1300 it had taken wynn's place in common use. Other forms of the letter were a pair of V's whose branches cross in the middle. An obsolete, cursive form found in the nineteenth century in both English and German was in the form of an "n" whose rightmost branch curved around as in a cursive "v".

The Latin [w] sound developed into Romance [v]; therefore V no longer adequately represented Germanic [w]. In German â€” as in Romance â€” the phoneme [w] was lost; this is why German W represents [v] rather than [w]. In Dutch, W is a labiodental approximant (with the exception of words with EEUW, which have ), or other diphthongs containing -UW. There are only five major European languages that use W in native words: English, German, Polish, Dutch, and Welsh. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh as a vowel. In the Swedish and Finnish alphabets, "W" is seen as a variant of "V" and not a separate letter. It is however recognized and maintained in names, like "William". In the alphabets of modern Romance languages, it is not used either, except in foreign names and words recently borrowed (le week-end, il watt, el kiwi). When a spelling for the [w] sound in a native word is needed, a spelling from the native alphabet, such as U or OU, can be used instead. In Hebrew the same letter, Waw (letter) or vav is used to spell both [w] and [v], which can make problems in some cases. For example many Israelis say "Hollyvud" rather than "Hollywood" or "Darvin" rather than "Darwin". See more (in Hebrew). The equivalent representation of the [w] sound in the Cyrillic alphabet is &

1038;, a letter unique to the Belarusian language. The Russians, however, use the Cyrillic character that looks like a "Ð’", but which is always pronounced , when transliterating "W."

"Double U" is the only English letter name with more than one syllable. This gives the nine-syllable initialism World Wide Web the irony of being an abbreviation that takes more syllables to say than the unabbreviated form. A few speakers therefore shorten the name "double u" into "dub" only, although this is rather rare and nonstandard; for example, World Wide Web the irony of being an abbreviation that takes more syllables to say than the unabbreviated form. A few speakers therefore shorten the name "double u" into "dub" only, although this is rather rare and nonstandard; for example, University of Washington is known colloquially as "U Dub". In the Texas dialect of American English, the name is often condensed to two syllables rather than three, resulting in George W. Bush's nickname of "Dubya".

Codes for computing

{{Letter |NATO=Whiskey |Morse=Â·â€“â€“ |B1=â—‹ |B2=â—? |B3=â—‹ |B4=â—? |B5=â—? |B6=â—? }} In Unicode the capital W is codepoint U+0057 and the lowercase w is U+0077. The ASCII code for capital W is 87 and for lowercase w is 119; or in Binary numeral system 01010111 and 01110111, correspondingly. The EBCDIC code for capital W is 230 and for lowercase w is 166. The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "&

87;" and "&
- 119;" for upper and lower case respectively.

Meanings for W

- In astronomy,

C/1984 W2

(4035) 1986 WD

- In biochemistry, W is the symbol for tryptophan.

- In calendars, W is often an abbreviation for Wednesday.

- In chemistry, W is the symbol for tungsten, after its German name, Wolfram.

- In computing,

Meanings of H|H). This is because in some programs (e.g., many Unix shells) the keystroke control-W is used to delete the previous word.

Unix

W Window System

- In film, W is the name of a 1973 American film; see W (film)

- In genetics W denotes the sex-determination system.

sex-determination system

- In population genetics, w is the symbol for fitness (biology)

- In the International Phonetic Alphabet, [w] represents a labial-velar approximant.

- In Italy, W (which does not appear in the Italian alphabet) stands for Vive, Viva|Viva ("long live").

- In Japan, W is commonly used in slang and advertising to represent the English loanword "double". There is also a J-Pop act called W (Double You). Also, as Internet Slang, it can be used as "lol".

- In journalism, the Five Ws are who, what, when, where and why.

- In the SI system,

- In physics,

W and Z bosons|W boson

W is the number of states a particle can occupy in a system.

- In politics, W is a nickname of President of the United_States|American President George W. Bush, sometimes spelled out as "Dubya" (the President's name is sometimes written "George Double-U Bush"). "W" is used by Bush himself, on campaign signs, and by many of his supporters. Dubya is generally used by opponents of Bush, or by those making fun of him.

- As the first letter of a postal code,

United Kingdom

London

- In weather forecasting, geography, and weather vanes, W stands for west, one of the four cardinal directions.

- In publishing, W is the name of an American fashion magazine; see W (magazine).

- W Hotels is an international chain of boutique hotels in urban centers.

- In radiocommunication, W is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United States. W is generally used as the first letter of radio call sign allocated to radio call sign allocated to broadcast_television or radio stations east of the Mississippi river.

- In television,

National Weather Service

Severe weather terminology