W

W is the twenty-third letter of the modern Latin alphabet.

W was invented in the 7th century by Anglo-Saxon writers, it was originally a double V (which also represented U—hence its English name "Double U", because the /w/ sound was spelled "vv"). The sound 'W' was previously represented by the Runic letter Wynn (Ƿ).

The Latin /w/ sound developed into Romance /v/; therefore V no longer adequately represented Germanic /w/. In German—like in Romance—the phoneme /w/ was lost, this is why German W represents /v/ rather than /w/. In Dutch, W is an approximant (with the exception of words with EEUW, which have [-e:w]).

In the Swedish and Finnish alphabets, "W" is seen as a variant of "V" and not a separate letter. It is however recognised and maintained in names, like "William".

Whiskey represents the letter W in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

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 a command on Unix systems that displays information on users 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 the Metric 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").
• In publishing, W is the name of an American fashion magazine; see W magazine.
• 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 digital cable television channel dedicated to women's issues, formerly called WTN; see W Network.
  • W is the name of a television character on the cooking show Good Eats.
• In video games,
  • W is the abbreviation for Wario, a Nintendo character.

Two-letter combinations starting with W:

• wa wb wc wd we wf wg wh wi wj wk wl wm wn wo wp wq wr ws wt wu wv ww wx wy wz