u

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• /juː/
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• Wales: /jɪʊ̯/
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• rhymes with -uː
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• /ˈjuː/
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• Wales: /ɪʊ̯/
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• homophone: ewe
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• homophone: hew
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• homophone: hue
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• homophone: Hugh (h-dropping)
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• homophone: yew
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• homophone: you (not in Wales)
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• Australian: /a/
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• Australian: /jʉː/
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• Australian: /ʉː/
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• Australian: /ʊ/
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• Southern-England: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
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• Canada: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
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• Received-Pronunciation: /ə/
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• Received-Pronunciation: /ʌ/
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• Received-Pronunciation: /juː/
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• Received-Pronunciation: /uː/
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• Received-Pronunciation: /ʊ/
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• Canada, US: /ə/
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• Canada, US: /ʌ/
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• Canada, US: /ju/
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• Canada, US: /u/
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• Canada, US: /ʊ/
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• General-American: Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
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• South, US: /ə/
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• South, US: /ʌ/
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• South, US: /ɜ/
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• South, US: /juː/
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• South, US: /uː/
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• South, US: /ʊ/
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• CMU ARPABET: Y UW1 Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
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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).

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.

See Ü.

Borrowed from Burmese ဦး (u:).

34 source translations are retained for this English entry.

• Chinese Mandarin: 濮滿 /濮满 (pú mǎn) — a language belonging to the Austroasiatic language family
• Arabic: أُو (ʔū) — name of the letter U, u
• Arabic: يُو (yū) — name of the letter U, u
• Asturian: u — name of the letter U, u
• Bengali: ইউ (iu) — name of the letter U, u
• Bulgarian: у (u) — name of the letter U, u
• Burmese: ယူ (yu) — name of the letter U, u
• Catalan: u — name of the letter U, u
• Esperanto: u — name of the letter U, u
• Finnish: uu — name of the letter U, u
• Galician: u — name of the letter U, u
• Greek: γιου (giou) — name of the letter U, u
• Hawaiian: ʻū — name of the letter U, u
• Hindi: यू (yū) — name of the letter U, u
• Ido: u — name of the letter U, u
• Irish: ú — name of the letter U, u
• Irish: úr — name of the letter U, u
• Japanese: ユー (yū) — name of the letter U, u
• Korean: 유 (yu) — name of the letter U, u
• Latin: ū — name of the letter U, u
• Malay: yu — name of the letter U, u
• Marathi: यू (yū) — name of the letter U, u
• Occitan: u — name of the letter U, u
• Polish: u — name of the letter U, u
• Portuguese: u — name of the letter U, u
• Russian: ю (ju) — name of the letter U, u
• Russian: у (u) — name of the letter U, u
• Spanish: u — name of the letter U, u
• Thai: ยู (yuu) — name of the letter U, u
• Turkish: u — name of the letter U, u
• Vietnamese: u — name of the letter U, u
• Welsh: u — name of the letter U, u
• Welsh: u bedol — name of the letter U, u
• Welsh: u gwpan — name of the letter U, u