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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

u.

The twenty-first letter of the English alphabet, called u and written in the Latin script.

1 character1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

character/ˈjuː//ɪʊ̯/Wales/a/Australia/jʉː/Australia
  1. The twenty-first letter of the English alphabet, called u and written in the Latin script.

    letter · lowercase
    I prefer the u in Arial to the one in Times New Roman.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English lower case letter v (also written u), from Old English lower case u, from 7th century replacement by lower case u of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc letter ᚢ (u, ur), derived from Raetic letter u. Before the 1700s, the pointed form v was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form u was used elsewhere, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed haue and vpon. Eventually, in the 1700s, to differentiate between the consonant and vowel sounds, the v form was used to represent the consonant, and u the vowel sound. v then preceded u in the alphabet, but the order has since reversed.

noun/ˈjuː//ɪʊ̯/Wales/a/Australia/jʉː/Australia
  1. The name of the Latin script letter U/u.

  2. A thing in the shape of the letter U.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English lower case letter v (also written u), from Old English lower case u, from 7th century replacement by lower case u of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc letter ᚢ (u, ur), derived from Raetic letter u. Before the 1700s, the pointed form v was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form u was used elsewhere, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, have and upon were printed haue and vpon. Eventually, in the 1700s, to differentiate between the consonant and vowel sounds, the v form was used to represent the consonant, and u the vowel sound. v then preceded u in the alphabet, but the order has since reversed.

pron
  1. Abbreviation of you.

    Internet · abbreviation · alt-of · nominative · objective · plural · second-person · singular
    t8k me w u
adj
  1. Abbreviation of underwater.

    abbreviation · alt-of
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.