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V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet.

Like F, Greek Ypsilon has Semitic Waw as its letter of origin. The Etruscans somehow simplified the letter to V. Its Etruscan sound value was /u/; but since Latin lacked a letter for /w/, Romans used V for both /w/ and /u/, as in QVVS. In some Roman hands, it was written as a modern uppercase V, while in others like uncial it resembled modern lowercase u. With the Medioeval introduction of the distinction between both case s, the pair was written as V/u, as in Vniuersitas. In Romance languages, V came to represent /v/ which developed from /w/; Around the Renaissance, U and V were felt as sounds different enough to warrant their own letters, and a lowercase v and an uppercase U were developed. A similar evolution happened with I/ J.

German W (or double u , from VV) originally was pronounced as the English letter – but was pronounced /v/ since Middle High German times. At the same time, V was in German pronounced as in English, but the German Vau soon stood for /f/ again (the same is probably now happening in Dutch).

See SAMPA Chart for pronunciation key.

Victor represents the letter V in the NATO phonetic alphabet.

1 Meanings for V

• In biochemistry, V is the symbol for valine.
• In chemistry, V is the symbol for vanadium.
• In communication, V is the name of a hand gesture; see V signThe V sign is a hand gesture in which the first and second fingers are raised and parted, whilst the remaining fingers are clenched. Generally considered a "Victory" sign, it can also carry connotations of "Peace" and "Defiance". In the UK, if the hand is
• In computer scienceIn its most general sense, computer science CS or compsci is the study of computation and information processing, both in hardware and in software. Introduction Computer science encomposses a variety of topics relating to computation, ranging from abstrac,
  • V is an operation on a semaphoreA semaphore is a protected variable (or abstract data type) and constitutes the classic method for restricting access to shared resources (e. storage) in a multi-processing environment. They were invented by Edsger Dijkstra and first used in the THE opera, used for process synchronisation.
  • V is the name of an operating systemIn computing, an operating system OS is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations, as well as running application software such as word processing programs and web browsers. In general, t developed at Stanford UniversityFor other meanings of Stanford see Stanford (disambiguation). Stanford University is a privately funded university in Stanford, California. It is located approximately 35 miles southeast of San Francisco, in an unincorporated part of Santa Clara County ad.
• In electrical engineeringElectrical engineering is an engineering discipline that deals with the study and application of electricity and electromagnetism. Its practitioners are called electrical engineer s. Electrical engineering is a broad field that encompasses many subfields., V is the symbol for voltage (also known as electric potential, see below).
• In financial securities, V is the stock symbol for Vivendi Universal.
• In grammar, v is an abbreviation for verb.
• In international licence plate codes, V stands for Vatican City.
• In the Metric system, V is the symbol for volt, the SI derived unit for electric potential.
• In physics, v is often a variable for speed or velocity.
• In Roman numerals, V denotes the number five.
• In literature, Thomas Pynchon's first novel is called V. (including the period).
• In television, V is the name of a science fiction TV series
• In music,
  • the roman numeral V is the dominant scale degree, chord, or diatonic function, when distinguished V = major and v = minor.
  • V is the name of a band from the United Kingdom; see V (band).
  • V is the name of an album released by the band Live in 2001.
• V is the name of a drink produced by Frucor in New Zealand.