W

Latin alphabet Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz

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; it is from this <uu> digraph that the modern name "double U" comes. This digraph was not extensively used, the sound usually being 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.

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 four major European languages that use W in native words: English, German, Polish, and Dutch. 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 use 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.

"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".

Alternative representations

Whiskey represents the letter W in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

In international Morse code the letter W is DitDahDah: · - -

In Braille the letter W is represented as ⠺ (in Unicode), the dot pattern:

.X
XX
.X

Computing

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 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.
  • W is the name of a graphical windowing system for Unix platforms; see W Window System.
• In film, W is the name of a 1973 American film; see W (film)
• In genetics W denotes the W chromosome.
  • WZ denotes female in the WZ sex-determination system.
• 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). 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,
  • W is the symbol for the watt, the SI derived unit for power.
• 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.
• 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 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 a 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 callsigns allocated to broadcast television or radio stations east of the Mississippi river.
• 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 Weather Service issues a weather watch or warning, etc (see Severe weather terminology#Watches.2C Warnings and Advisories as defined by the NWS.
• 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.
• w or w/ is an abbreviation for the word "with".

See also

• National_Association_of_W_Lovers