w

W is the twenty-third letter of the modern Latin alphabet and the standard letter used in English and many other languages. In English, it denotes the consonant sound /w/, as in words like water and away. In some languages its pronunciation varies or it can function differently, such as serving as a vowel in Welsh.

Origins and naming: W originated in the early medieval period as a ligature of two V shapes (written as two Vs or two Us) used in Latin manuscripts to represent the /w/ sound. It was adopted into the Latin-based alphabets of Western Europe during the 7th to 8th centuries, especially in Frankish and English scribal traditions. The name “double u” (or “double v” in some languages) reflects its visual origin rather than a unique phonetic symbol.

Phonology and usage: In English, W represents the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/. It often appears in digraphs and word-initial clusters that shape its pronunciation, such as in wh- words where historical pronunciations varied by dialect. In German, the letter W typically represents /v/. In some languages, including Welsh, W can function as a vowel. Across languages, W thus shows varying phonological roles from consonant to vowel depending on linguistic context.

Encoding: In computer character sets, W is encoded as uppercase U+0057 and lowercase U+0077 in Unicode, corresponding to ASCII codes 87 and 119.