W

The letter W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is double-u ['dʌb.l.ju:].

The earliest form of the letter W was a doubled V used in the 7th century by the earliest writers of Old English; it is from this <uu> digraph that the modern name "double U" comes. This digraph was not extensively used, as its sound was usually represented instead by the runic wynn (Ƿ), but W gained popularity after the Norman Conquest, and by 1300 it had taken wynn's place in common use. Other forms of the letter were a pair of Vs 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 — as in Romance — 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 /eːw/), or other diphthongs containing -UW.

There are only five major European languages that use W in native words: English, German, Polish, Dutch, and Welsh. Only English uses it to represent a voiced labial-velar approximant though, German and Polish uses it for a voiced labiodental fricative (with Polish using Ł for the labial-velar approximant), while Dutch uses it for a labiodental approximant. Unlike its use in other languages, the letter is used in Welsh as a vowel.

In the Finnish alphabet, "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 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 Ў, a letter unique to the Belarusian language. The Russians, however, use the Cyrillic character В, which is always pronounced <v>, when transliterating "W."

"Double U" is the only English letter name with more than one syllable. This gives the nine-syllable initialism www 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".

Swedish Double V

The W, called "double V" in Sweden, finally entered the language officially in 2006, being accepted into the Swedish Academy's dictionary. Up to that time, it was simply treated as a variety of the single V, but has become the 29th letter to be acknowledged as part of the Swedish alphabet.

Codes for computing

class="template-letter-box | 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 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,
  • W stands for the Wolf-Rayet class of stars
  • W stands for a November 16 through 30 discovery, in the provisional designation of a comet (e.g. C/1984 W2, Comet Hartley) or asteroid (e.g. (4035) 1986 WD).
• In baseball, W is used in player and team statatics referring to "wins."
• 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,
  • ^W is often used jokingly to indicate the intended deletion of the previous word (see also H). This is because in some programs (e.g., many Unix shells) the keystroke control-W is used to delete the previous word.
  • w is a command on Unix systems that displays information on users who are currently logged in. It is the only one-letter Unix command.
  • W is the name of a graphical windowing system for Unix platforms; see W Window System.
• In computing and video games,
  • W is the symbol for Wario, a Nintendo character.
  • In NetHack, "w" is the command to wield (or unwield) a weapon, and "W" is the command to wear armor.
  • As noted below, Japanese players on online games such as Final Fantasy XI use "w" in the same way "lol" is used, and players from other countries have begun to use it in this fashion as well.
• In film, W is the name of a 1973 American film; see W (film)
• In genetics W denotes the W chromosome.
  • In population genetics, w is the symbol for fitness
• In the International Phonetic Alphabet, [w] represents a labial-velar approximant.
• In Italy, W (which does not appear in the Italian alphabet) stands for 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). In Japanese internet slang, "w" is used in the same way as "lol". In this meaning, w is short for "warai", which means "laughter".
• In journalism, the Five Ws are who, what, when, where and why.
• In mathematics, W is most commonly used to represent Lambert's W function.
• In physics,
  • W is often the variable for energy or work, measured in joules.
  • W is a kind of a subatomic particle, the W boson.
  • W is the number of states a particle can occupy in a system.
• In politics, W is a nickname of 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,
  • In the United Kingdom, W stands for West London.
• In publishing, W is the name of an American fashion magazine; see W (magazine).
• In radio,
  • the W band ranges from 75 to 111 GHz
• In radiocommunication, W is one of the ITU prefixes allocated to the United States. W is generally used as the first letter of callsigns allocated to broadcast television or radio stations east of the Mississippi river.
• In the SI system,
  • W is the symbol for the watt, the SI derived unit for power.
• In television,
  • W is the name of a Canadian specialty service dedicated to women's issues, formerly called WTN; see W Network.
  • On the TV show "Good Eats," W is an ill-tempered kitchen supply salesperson.
  • In the Champaign-Decatur-Springfield TV Market (DMA 82)(see Media market), a W is inserted over the picture in an upper corner when the National Weather Service issues a weather watch or warning, etc (see Severe weather terminology#Watches.2C Warnings and Advisories as defined by the NWS.
• W Hotels is an international chain of boutique hotels in urban centers.
• In weather forecasting, geography, and weather vanes, W stands for west, one of the four cardinal directions.
• w or w/ is an abbreviation for the word "with".
• Sometimes, W is substituted for or confused with the lowercase Greek letter omega.

See also

• National Association of W Lovers