u
/ˈjuː/ noun, adjective, proper noun
Forms ues ur urs urself urselves Uer Uest Us you
- noun The name of the Latin script letter U/u.
- noun A thing in the shape of the letter U.
- noun A U-turn.
- noun (UK) A film with the film classification U (“universal”).
- adjective (not comparable, education, espionage) Usually in parentheses: abbreviation of unclassified.
- proper noun An Austroasiatic language spoken in China.
- noun An honorific to a Burmese man “U Thant; U Nu”
- proper noun (uncommon) The east part of Ü-Tsang, centered in Lhasa.
- proper noun (uncommon) The Central Tibetan language, a variety of Tibetan.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Etymology
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.
An abbreviation of a word or term beginning with the letter U. Adjective sense 1 (“characteristic of the upper classes”) was coined by British linguist Alan S. C. Ross (1907–1980) in a 1954 article, and popularized by the English journalist and writer Nancy Mitford (1904–1973).
Borrowed from Burmese ဦး (u:).
Borrowed from Tibetan དབུས (dbus), which is pronounced like Ü in Lhasa.
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 — from the Wiktionary entry “u”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details