| 释义 |
W|ˈdʌb(ə)ljuː|
the 23rd letter of the modern English alphabet, is an addition to the ancient Roman alphabet, having originated from a ligatured doubling of the Roman letter represented by the U and V of modern alphabets. When, in the 7th c., the Latin alphabet was first applied to the writing of English, it became necessary to provide a symbol for the sound |w|, which did not exist in contemporary Latin. This sound, a gutturally-modified bilabial voiced spirant, is acoustically almost identical with the devocalized |u| or |ʊ|, which was the sound originally expressed by the Roman U or V as a consonant-symbol; but before the 7th c. this Latin sound had developed into |v|. The single u or v therefore could not without ambiguity be used to represent (w), though this was occasionally done, and in some Northumbrian texts was the regular practice. The ordinary sign for |w| was at first uu, but in the 8th c. this began to be superseded by ƿ, a character borrowed from the Runic alphabet, in which its name was wyn (Kentish wen). Eventually the use of ƿ became almost universal, but in the mean time the uu was carried from England to the continent, being used for the sound |w| in the German dialects, and in French proper names and other words of Teut. and Celtic origin. In the 11th c. the ligatured form was introduced into England by Norman scribes, and gradually took the place of ƿ, which finally went out of use about a.d. 1300. The character W was probably very early regarded as a single letter, although it has never lost its original name of ‘double U’.
In OE. the sound |w| occurred initially not only before vowels but also before |l| and |r|. The combination wl became obsolete in the 15th c. (in Sc. poetry wlonk, alliterating with w- words, was used in the 16th c.); wr is still written, but the w is silent in standard English, though in some dialects it is sounded as |w| or as |v|. OE. had also the initial combination |hw|, written hu(u, hƿ, and subsequently ƿh, wh; for the later development of this phonetic combination, and the history of the associated symbols, see wh.
The chief etymological sources of the Eng. |w| are: (1) OE. |w|, mainly representing Indogermanic w, ghw, kw, or kw; (2) ON. |w| of the same origin (in cited words expressed by v, according to Icelandic usage); (3) OF. |w|, retained in north-eastern Fr. dialects, but elsewhere becoming |gw| and ultimately |g|, whence in English such doublets as wage and gage, warranty and guaranty. The sound also occurs, represented otherwise than by w, in words of Latin origin containing the combinations qu |kw| and su |sw|, as question, suavity, persuade (in 16–18th c. often written with sw); also in a few Fr. words, as reservoir |-vwɑː(r)|.
So far as it remains a consonant-symbol, the letter never denotes any other sound than |w|, but in a few words it has ceased to be pronounced, though still written, as in answer, sword, two, and in the combination wr referred to above. In the unstressed second element of a compound, |w| tends to be elided in colloquial speech. This contracted pronunciation is in some words a mere vulgarism (marked as such by spellings like back'ard, forrard, allus for always); in Norwich and some other place-names in -wich it is the only one regarded as correct, and the same may be said with regard to the nautical term gunwale; in midwife the contraction |ˈmɪdɪf|, formerly general, is now rarely heard. The tendency to elision of w beginning an unstressed second syllable is shown also in the change of housewife into huzzif, huzzy, where the spelling has followed the pronunciation, though the uncontracted form is now restored exc. in a special disparaging sense.
In some ME. MSS. (northern and north midland), and in many Scottish texts of the 15th and 16th centuries, w is written for v, and vice versa. In the 16th and 17th c., books printed from continental type often have the letter in the divided form VV, vv.
In ME. a new |w| arose from the development of intervocalic or final (ɣ), inherited from OE., as in bowe:—earlier boȝe:—OE. boᵹa. This sound, however, has not survived as a consonant, because every (w) after a stressed vowel became a u-glide, the terminal element of a diphthong. From the early ME. period w was often substituted for u in vowel-digraphs (whether denoting diphthongs or simple vowels). In modern spelling aw, ew, ow are phonetically equivalent to au, eu, ou, though ow never stands for |uː|, as in the older yow = you (except in the surname Cowper); the choice between u and w has been determined to some extent by etymological tradition, but is mainly arbitrary; at the end of a word w, not u, is used all but invariably. The traditional statement of grammarians that ‘W is a vowel as well as a consonant’ refers to its use in these digraphs; but in the 14–15th c., and in Sc. also in the 16th c., w occasionally represents |uː|, as in trw = true, swne = soon, swth = sooth.
In south-eastern dialects |w| is regularly substituted for |v|, and many writers of the first half of the 19th c. attribute to the Cockney dialect the habit of misusing |v| for |w| and |w| for |v| on all occasions. No trace of this survives in present-day London speech; and although there is no doubt that the Kentish |w| for |v| at one time extended to London, it is probable that the reverse substitution was merely an occasional (if perhaps rather frequent) result of the endeavour to speak correctly.
1763Foote Mayor of G. i. (1764) 21 Sneak. Yes, werry like Wenus. 1803Pegge Anecd. Engl. Lang. (1814) 77 The..most offensive error in pronunciation among the Londoners..lies in the transpositional use of the letters W and V, ever to be heard where there is any possibility of inverting them. Thus they always say, Weal, instead of veal; and Winegar, instead of vinegar; while, on the other hand, you hear Vicked, for wicked—Vig, for wig; and a few others. 1805T. Harral Scenes of Life III. 26 ‘Last night thou gavest me to a willain's arms!’—‘A villain?’..‘Ay, a willain!’ 1837Dickens Pickw. xxxiv, ‘Do you spell it [Weller] with a V or a W?’..‘I spells it with a V’... ‘Quite right too, Samivel... Put it down a we, my lord’. 1844T. H. Key Alphabet 107 London too is remarkable for the confusion of the sounds, though this confusion does not seem to arise from any inability to pronounce either a w or a v, each being substituted for the other with a most amusing perversity.
A mispronunciation of |w| for |r|, in some persons due to a physical defect, has sometimes been a fashionable affectation.
1837Dickens Pickw. xxxv, ‘Gwacious heavens!’ said his lordship. ‘I thought evewebody had seen the new mail⁓cart; it's the neatest, pwettiest, gwacefullest thing that ever wan.’ 1844T. H. Key Alphabet 93 The letter r is at times confounded with w. Thus it is not a very rare variety of articulation that rubbish is pronounced wubbish.
II.
1. The letter, its sound or name.
c1465in Pol. Rel. & L. Poems 2 A Doble W. for Warwike, þat god be his gide. 1552Huloet Kk ij b, Because there is a diuersitie betwene the single V and the dowble W, therfore the alphabet of them shalbe set diuersly. [The sequence is: Va, Wa, Vd.] 1580W. Bullokar Bk. at large 8 W. I account also misnamed to call it double : v : for then shoulde we sounde it : v : v : but his sounde agreeth to the olde name of : y : (which is wy). c1595R. Carew in G. G. Smith Elizab. Crit. Ess. (1904) II. 286 For letters, wee haue Q. more then the Greekes; K. and Y. more then the Latynes; and W. more then them both, or the French and Italians. 1599Thynne Animadv. (1875) 65 The latyne, Italiane, frenche, and spanyshe haue no doble W. a1637B. Jonson Engl. Gram. iii. (1640) 40 W, Is but the V. geminated in the full sound, and though it have the seate of a Consonant with us, the power is alwayes Vowellish, even where it leades the Vowell in any Syllabe: as if you marke it, pronounce the two uu. like ♉. quicke in passage and these words: ♉-ine. ♉-ant. ♉-ood. ♉-ast. ʃ♉-ing. ʃ♉-am. Will sound wine. want. wood. wast. swing. swam. 1697Dryden æneis Ded. (e) 1, [In the English Aeneis] where a Vowel ends a word, the next begins either with a Consonant, or what is its equivalent; for our W and H aspirate..are plainly such. 1704Expert Orthographist in Ellis E.E. Pron. i. iii. (1869) 160 All polysyllables ending in obscure o have w added for ornament's sake as arrow, bellows, &c. 1796Pegge Anonym. (1809) 454 One would wonder how the w could ever come to be a letter in our language, for it is plainly nothing else but the u vowel; for..uill spells will, as much as will. 1836C. A. Southey Birth-day i. 37 And sprawling W's, and V's, and Y's, Gaped prodigiously. 1869Ellis E.E. Pron. i. iii. 187 In Europe (w) is thought to be peculiar to England..In Arabic however (w) is quite at home. a1890W. B. Scott Autob. (1892) I. ii. 29 He went over the letters, giving them the broad old Scotch pronunciation: A was awe, B was bay, C was say, and so on, ending with U sounded like oo in good, W as duploo, Z as izzid. 1899Allbutt's Syst. Med. VII. 449 note, The voiceless W and the voiceless L have been given above within brackets, the former being now almost confined to Scotland and the latter being peculiar to Wales.
2. The letter considered with regard to its shape. Also attrib.
1798Hull Advertiser 28 July 2/1 Chairs in sets..with W, tableau and X backs. 1871Cassell's Nat. Hist. I. 266 The molars show sharp tubercles separated by transverse furrows, generally producing a sort of W-like pattern on each tooth. 1882Floyer Unexpl. Baluchistan 17 The walls..are..rendered ornamental by triangular recesses fitting one into another like an endless W, each triangle being filled up with lines of smaller W's.
3. Abbreviations. W. = various personal names, as William, Walter, Winifred; W, colloq. shortening of W.C.: a lavatory or water-closet; W (Electr.) = watt; W. = West (W.N.W. west-north-west, W.S.W. west-south-west); † W. (Calendar) = Whitsunday; W (Chem.) = tungsten (mod.L. wolframium); W., women('s size) (WX, extra-large women's size); W.A., Western Australia; WASP (U.S.), Women's Airforce Service Pilots; WAT (Aeronaut.), Weight and Temperature; WATS (U.S.), Wide Area Telephone Service; W.C. = water-closet; W.C. the West Central postal district of London; W.C.C., World Council of Churches; WCT, World Championship Tennis; W.C.T.U. (N. Amer.), Women's Christian Temperance Union; W.D., War Department; W.D.C., Woman Detective Constable; W.D.S., Woman Detective Sergeant; W.E.A., Workers' Educational Association; w.e.f., with effect from; W.E.U., Western European Union; wff (Logic) = well-formed formula s.v. well-formed ppl. a. c; WFTU, World Federation of Trade Unions; w.h.b., wash-hand basin; W.H.O., World Health Organization; W.I., West Indies (also † West India); W.I., Women's Institute; W.I.Z.O., Wizo |ˈwiːtzəʊ|, Women's International Zionist Organization; WKB (Physics) [initials of G. Wentzel, H. A. Kramers, and L. Brillouin, who each published papers on the method in 1926], used attrib. with reference to a method for obtaining an approximate solution of the Schrödinger equation based on the expansion of the wave function in powers of Planck's constant, h; W.L.A., Women's Land Army; W.M.O., World Meteorological Organization; W.O., War Office; W.O., Warrant Officer; W.O.C.(S.), waiting on cement (to set); WORM |wɜːm| Computing, write once read mostly (or many times): used (chiefly attrib.) to designate optical memory or an optical storage device on to which data may be written once only by laser, and which is thereafter used as ROM; W.O.S.B. (also with pronunc. ˈwɒzbɪ), War Office Selection Board; W.O.W., waiting on weather; w.p., weather permitting; WP, word processing; WPA, (U.S.), Works Progress Administration; W.P.B., w.p.b. (slang), waste-paper basket; W.P.C., Woman Police Constable; w.p.m., words per minute; W.R.A.N.S. |rænz| (Austral.), Women's Royal Australian Naval Service; hence WRAN, Wran, a member of this; W.R.N.S., Women's Royal Naval Service; cf. Wren2; w.r.t., with respect to; W.R.V.S., Women's Royal Voluntary Service, formerly W.V.S.; W.S. (Scotland) = Writer to the Signet; W.S.P.U., Women's Social and Political Union; W/T, W.T., wireless telegraphy; freq. attrib.; w/v (see quot. 1907); W.V.S., Women's Voluntary Service; WW (I, II), World War (One, Two); W.W.W., World Weather Watch. See also , , C., Wasp, , , Wren2.
1953Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood (1954) 11 Talking to the lamp-post..Using language..Singing in the *W. 1954A. S. C. Ross in Neuphilol. Mitteilungen LV. 41 W. either ‘the letter W’ or ‘W.C.’ (a frequent non-U expression for ‘lavatory’). 1978E. Malpass Wind brings up Rain x. 105 A small garden of weeds, with a cinder path leading to a W.
1513Sir E. Howard in Lett. & Papers War France (1897) 94 The wynd feeryd owt off the *W.N.W. into the E.N.E. 1708Lond. Gaz. No. 4422/7 We came to an Anchor about Noon, the Wind at W. by S. 1778Engl. Gazetteer (ed. 2) s.v. Fale, It rises about 2 miles W. of Roche Hills. 1891W. C. Russell Marriage at Sea v, The..compass was about W.S.W.
1926–7,1974W [see S.W. s.v. S 4 a].
c1565Gude & Godlie Ball. (S.T.S.) Calendar l 2 b, Ye shal finde..at the 29. of April this letter *W where begine for Whitsonday.
1900Morning Post 12 July 9/4 Town Pro. W.A. 1971Sunday Australian 8 Aug. 5/2 The State shipping service in *WA has been made the scapegoat for Government indecision.
1943Yank 24 Sept. 17 *WASP, which stands for ‘Womens Air Force Service Pilots’ is the new official title of women pilots of the AAF.
1957Times 9 Dec. 12/7 There is an additional requirement governing the maximum take-off and landing weights for the altitude and weight prevailing (known as the ‘*WAT curve’). 1976B. Lecomber Dead Weight xi. 136 Those coins weigh 600 lb..if we pile in three people on top of that we'll be totally WAT-limited... WAT—Weight and Temperature.
1962Fleet Owner Aug. 73/1 With *WATS you pay a monthly fee for a special line over which you can call any telephone number in prescribed States. 1977New Yorker 12 Sept. 68/3 Harry has a WATS line, so Henny called Sadie again, this time for free.
1815Corr. W. Fowler (1907) 330 Apparatus for *W.C. at Normanby, which had to come from London. 1892T. B. F. Eminson Epidemic Pneumonia at Scotter 11 No W.C. or slaughter-house drains into them.
1857Punch 7 Feb. 51/2 Rowland Hill has just divided London's waste of brick by ten... Lawyers, and good Coram's Foundlings, All are found in *W.C. 1935E. Farjeon Nursery in Nineties i. viii. 63 We found the little oblong envelope..with..the London W.C. postmark.
1948Ecumenical Rev. Autumn 118 The work of two Conferences convened by the Study Department of the *W.C.C...is reported in this book. 1971K. Grubb Crypts of Power viii. 168 Many Churches of Asia, Africa and Latin America joined the W.C.C.
1969N.Y. Times 19 Feb. 54/5 Robert A. Briner of *W.C.T. said: ‘This is a truce.’ 1982Tennis Today June 12/3 Dallas had its best field for a few years, which was an effective answer to those who would suggest WCT are on the way out after the split with the Grand Prix.
1888Lindley & Widney California of South 109 The *W.C.T.U. was first organized here in 1883. 1956B. Holiday Lady sings Blues (1973) xix. 157 Nobody who has a police record can hold a liquor licence. This was a sop to the WCTU.
1855Admiralty Circular 27 Aug., In future the mark *W.D. (War Department), with the Broad Arrow, shall be used for Stores provided by the Ordnance Department. 1920Punch 7 Jan. 9/1 The orders are dead strict against civilians riding in W.D. vehicles. 1942E. Waugh Put out More Flags ii. 149 Patches of rank land marked on the signposts W.D., marked on the maps as numbered training areas. 1976‘J. Charlton’ Remington Set xviii. 86, I need something on a three-ton chassis..ex-WD Bedford would do nicely.
1970G. F. Newman Sir, You Bastard viii. 217 Find two *WDC's to accompany the women.
1972Police Rev. 8 Dec. 1597/1 We in Nottinghamshire have not yet decided whether we have D.P.W.s or W.D.C.s or whether they are *W.D.S.s or D.P.W. Sergts.
1910S. A. Barnett Let. 10 Mar. in H. Barnett Canon Barnett (1918) II. l. 332 The *W.E.A. has life. 1936A. Huxley Eyeless in Gaza xxix. 393 W.E.A. lecture-rooms. 1981D. Rowntree Dict. Educ. 350 Workers' Educational Association (WEA), a UK organisation founded in 1903 to stimulate and satisfy the demand for education among working class people... The WEA now arranges adult education classes and courses throughout the UK (no longer primarily for working class people).
1942Partridge Dict. Abbrev. 101/2 *w.e.f., with effect from (a given date). 1954J. Masters Bhowani Junction xxxii. 275 It terminated her duty with my battalion w.e.f. June the twelfth. 1978T. Allbeury Lantern Network viii. 93 The official notification of his promotion to major w.e.f. 1 Jan. 44.
1954Times 11 Nov. 8/7 The first [of the protocols] modifies the older treaty to allow for the adherence of Italy and the German Federal Republic..and emphasizes close cooperation with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, on which *W.E.U. will rely. a1974R. Crossman Diaries (1976) II. 401 George [Brown] proposes to go to a meeting of the W.E.U. next Tuesday and wants to make an important declaration there on Europe.
1944*w.f.f. [see prenex a.]. 1956A. Church Introd. Math. Logic (rev. ed.) I. i. 70 We shall hereafter use the abbreviations ‘wf’ for ‘well-formed’, ‘wff’ for ‘well-formed formula’, and ‘wffs’ for ‘well-formed formulas’. 1967Encycl. Philos. V. 2/2 This property will clearly be perceived if a small letter is systematically replaced by any wff. 1971G. Hunter Metalogic i. 4 What things are to be wffs.
1947Times 17 Nov. 5/6 The International Transport Workers' Federation will meet..to consider further its decision recently taken in Washington not to affiliate to the *W.F.T.U. 1978Statesman's Year-Bk. i. 39 The WFTU formally came into existence on 3 Oct. 1945.
1975Evening Herald (Dublin) 8 May 10/3 (Advt.), Cloakroom with w.c. and *w.h.b.
1946N.Y. Times 28 July iv. 2/3 Dr Thomas Parran..described the constitution of the *WHO as a major contribution to world peace. 1960New Statesman 2 Apr. 478/3 The Americans are..working with the WHO to build hospitals and eliminate malaria. 1977G. Scott Hot Pursuit xi. 98 If this was a WHO team..we could be passing up the one opportunity we had.
1848Brit. Army Despatch 17 Nov. 292/2 Late Captain 2nd *W.I. Regt. 1900Naval & Mil. Rev. July 5 Name of Vessel. Pearl. Present Station. N.A. and W.I. 1973Advocate-News (Barbados) 17 Jan. 2/5 (heading) Deep concern over W.I.
1928Mid-Sussex Times 18 Dec. 8/1 A tangible result of the *W.I. trading scheme. 1940C. Milburn Diary 26 Mar. (1979) 28 A W.I. Produce Meeting..to hear about sugar for jam and the arrangements about getting it for W.I. members. 1965New Society 7 Jan. 5 At Stony Creek, Ontario, in 1897, the first WI meeting was held... It wasn't until the outbreak of World War I that a Canadian widow named Mrs. Watt introduced the WI to Britain... The first meeting was held in September 1915. 1981J. Scott Distant View of Death xii. 158 Jars of home produce to transport to the WI stall set up in the square.
1925Zionist Rev. IX. 50/2 The growing edifice of the *W.I.Z.O. 1940A. Ulitzur Two Decades of Keren Hayesod iii. 47 The Women's International Zionist Organisation (Wizo). 1978Jewish Chron. 6 Oct. 14/3 Coventry and Leamington Wizo held a three-day nearly new sale and raised {pstlg}350 for Israel.
[1932J. L. Dunham in Physical Rev. XLI. 713 The Wentzel-Brillouin-Kramers method of handling the wave equation (hereinafter referred to as the W.B.K. method) is very well suited to the calculation of energy levels in heavy systems.] 1935Ibid. XLVII. 748/2 The wave function can be represented by the *WKB (Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin) solution. 1961Powell & Crasemann Quantum Mech. v. 142 The WKB solutions cannot be valid near a classical turning point, where the momentum is zero. 1974G. Reece tr. Hund's Hist. Quantum Theory vii. 97 This was confirmed by later proofs using the Schroedinger equation and the WKB approximation.
1939Times 26 Oct. 11/5 The farmer who is loth to employ one of the *W.L.A. may see his more progressive neighbour very well served. 1942C. Milburn Diary 17 Oct. (1979) 155, I did a little W.L.A. work, going down to the hostel with some magazines.
1951Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc. XXXII. 239/1 The International Meteorological Organization wound up its affairs in Paris on March 15–17, 1951 and handed over its assets, obligations and numerous resolutions to the new World Meteorological Organisation... Sir Nelson Johnson aptly put it when he said..‘The IMO is dying, long live the *WMO.’ 1977Whitaker's Almanack 1978 810/1 World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Geneva... The present membership is 139 States and 8 Territories.
1860F. Nightingale Let. 8 Dec. in C. Woodham-Smith Florence Nightingale (1950) xvi. 358, I do hope you won't have any vain ideas that you can be spared out of the *W.O... You are necessary to the reorganising of the W.O. 1914R. Brooke Let. 24 Sept. (1968) 619 He may go out as an interpreter... The W.O. has his name. 1931N. & Q. 5 Dec. 408/2 Who was Capt. Robert Holden, of the 130th Regt.? From Army Lists and W.O. Commission Books, it seems that he was commissioned Lieutenant in the 115th Regt., 14 Nov., 1794.
1887O. L. Perry Ranks & Badges H.M. Army & Navy ix. 102 Such *W.O.'s, N.C.O.'s and men as may be specially placed under their orders. 1977‘O. Jacks’ Autumn Heroes iv. 65 He's an ex W.O.II in the Paras.
1949Amer. Speech XXIV. 35 The verbal wocsing..is derived from the initials *W.O.C.S., which stand for waiting on cement to set (the written form is often simply woc without capitalization or punctuation)... A field worker tells me I must have misspelled the word, as it is always pronounced [ˈwɑkəsiŋ] in the field. 1974D. K. Smith in P. L. Moore et al. Drilling Practices Manual xvi. 400 Improvements in cements, understanding WOC times, and the use of admixes have reduced WOC time to a few hours under present-day practices.
1985Electronics 24 June 85/1 The model 5984 optical disk drive offers 400 megabytes of write-once-read-mostly (*WORM) data-storage space on a 51/4 in. disk. 1985Pract. Computing Oct. 110/1 The Worm (write-once read-many) drive has been around since 1978, when Philips demonstrated a 12 in. optical data disc based on its video-disc technology. 1986Guardian 5 June 13/4 CD–ROM is essentially a publishing medium, but ‘write once/read many’ (times) or WORM discs enable people to save their own data. 1987Financial Times 6 Jan. i. 20/5 With WORM, personal computer users can write (or scan) new documents onto a disc.
1945Jrnl. R. Army Med. Corps LXXXIV. 75 *W.O.S.B.'s which followed the pattern of the experimental Board. 1978Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts CXXVI. 268/1 The need for skilful selection of officers..led to the WOSB or War Office Selection Board. 1982S. Raven Shadows on Grass (1983) v. 95, I was summoned to a W.O.S.B...which would finally determine whether I was fit to be trained for a Commission.
1967R. De Sola Abbrev. Dict. (rev. ed.) 277/1 *WOW, waiting on weather. 1975Oil & Gas Industry Gloss. Terms (Bank of Scotland) 5/2 W.O.W., Waiting on Weather; usually applied to mobile offshore drilling platforms but can also refer to other offshore operations.
1889E. C. Dowson Let. 2 Mar. (1967) 43, I shall be at Baker St. as you prefer—*w.p. before 3.0, to-morrow. 1931Joyce Let. 17 Apr. (1966) III. 217, I..hope to arrive in London..that evg. (w.p.).
1974New Acronyms & Initialisms (Gale Research Co.), *WP, word processing. 1980City Recorder 10 Jan. 7/3 In a really small company, the executive who can operate a WP machine can work almost as a one man band.
1936N.Y. Herald Tribune 1 June 8/4 (heading) *W.P.A. must increase efficiency, says Ridder. 1943J. S. Huxley TVA ix. 69 In the reception room..the mural by a WPA artist helps the guide to explain the project. 1979Listener 16 Aug. 214/1 The Roosevelt WPA project and other attempts at a social art in the Thirties.
1903Photogram X. 320/1 Anonymous letters are strongly objected to, and..go into the *W.P.B. 1934T. E. Lawrence Lett. (1938) 815 Please dump it in the W.P.B. when it begins to bore you. 1939War Illustr. 16 Dec. p. ii/3 Possessing a very large wastepaper basket, I give short shrift to all anonymous correspondents. A glance at any missive signed with a nom-de-plume and into that w.p.b. it goes. 1974P. Flower Odd Job iii. 26 He..let it fall into the w.p.b. 1984Times 20 Jan. 10/1 So presumably it's someone's job to empty wpbs and clean already clean ashtrays for part of the year.
1963F. B. Fawcett Cycl. Initials & Abbrev. 158/2 *WPC, Woman Police Constable. 1966L. Southworth Felon in Disguise i. 17 ‘I'll send in the W.P.C. right away.’.. The Inspector left the room. 1981‘J. Ashford’ Loss of Culion xiii. 94 Why hadn't she accepted the offer of having a WPC with her?
1936G. Dewey GS Teacher p. xxiii, Suggested dictation rate: 30 *wpm. 1977Belfast Tel. 17 Jan. 17/1 (Advt.), Applicants should have a typing speed of at least 40 w.p.m. and also 80 w.p.m. shorthand.
1945Baker Austral. Lang. viii. 159 *W.R.A.N.S., Women's Royal Australian Naval Service (called Wrans or Rons). 1970M. Kelly Spinifex ii. 30 One of the WRANS hurried over, ‘Telephone, sir’. ‘Thanks, Betty.’
1919Daily Mail Year Bk. 49/2 The Admiralty must feel justly proud of their *W.R.N.S. 1977Navy News Dec. 20/1 Two world wars played a decisive part in the story of the WRNS. The First saw its formation..The Second swung those doors wide to a tremendous range of opportunities.
1956W. L. Ferrar Differential Calculus iii. 33 Let. z = f(y), y = ϕ(x); let z have a finite derivative f ′(y) *w.r.t. y. 1979Nature 30 Aug. 845/2 A measure D of the depth of this minimum is defined as the average VAI near days - 2 and + 4 (w.r.t. day 0 as the boundary transit time) minus the average VAI near day 1.
1966Care & Distribution of WRVS Processed Clothing (Women's Royal Voluntary Service) p. iii, The reputation built up by *WRVS in the war years for skilled care..has been enhanced in post-war years. 1978Morecambe Guardian 14 Mar. 13/1 She holds a long service medal from the WRVS and still retains very strong links with the village of Holme.
1852Thackeray Let. 24 May in J. Brown Lett. (1912) 403 Blackwood the *W.S. I saw in the Park yesterday. a1874R. Chambers in Casq. Lit. Ser. ii. I. 262/1 Served a regular apprenticeship to a *double-you-ess.
1907N. A. Martel in B. Villiers Case for Women's Suffrage 145 A young girl..came from Huddersfield..in the care of one of the leaders of the *W.S.P.U. 1967R. S. Churchill Winston S. Churchill II. xi. 402 The WSPU now resorted to stone throwing and later to arson.
1914W. S. Churchill in M. Gilbert Winston S. Churchill (1972) III. Compan. 1. 292 A submarine off Sylt report by *W/T (or by pigeons) at night to a waiting destroyer that the weather is favourable. 1923Man. Seamanship (Admiralty) II. 23 Visual and wireless messages..sent either to the flag deck or the W.T. office for transmission. 1965‘J. le Carré’ Looking-Glass War vii. 84 ‘He was a trainer in wireless transmission.’.. ‘The WT man?’ 1978R. V. Jones Most Secret War xlix. 489 Then I saw its astonishing heading: ‘Obscene W/T Traffic.’
1907Brit. Pharmaceutical Codex p. ix, ‘*w/v’ represents ‘weight in volume’, indicating that a weighed quantity of a solid substance is contained in solution in a measured quantity of liquid. 1973Nature 5 Oct. 267/2 Here I report the use of four inhibitors at concentrations of 0·5% w/v which can each stabilize ethanol in blood.
1939N. Last Diary 4 Sept. in Nella Last's War (1983) 11 I've got lots of plans made to spare time so as to work with the *W.V.S. 1976R. Barnard Little Local Murder iii. 30 The compère talked..to the head of the town's WVS.
1960Acronyms Dict. (Gale Research Co.) 210 *WWI, World War I. WWII, World War II. 1976Greenlist (J. R. Wrigley Catal.) No. 23. 30 Crascredo—No Joke... (The humour of W.W.1.) 1979G. F. Newman List iii. 25 The bank had been..incorporated in '41, shortly before America entered WWII.
1963Times 29 Apr. 9/1 It was pointed out during the congress that as ancillary measures must take several years the full realization of plans for a world weather watch (*W.W.W.) was as yet a distant prospect but the interval would enable scientists to ascertain weather potentialities. 1970Sci. Jrnl. Apr. 48 At the time of its inception in 1967 the WWW plan relied entirely on improving and extending existing systems.
1942A. P. Jephcott Girls growing Up i. 33 My biggest tragedy is I am fat & wear *W.X. clothes. 1971J. Thomson Not One of Us (1972) vii. 79 Cardboard boxes were piled everywhere..‘Gents' Hose. Assorted Colors.’ ‘Ladies Knickers. W.X.’ 1984W. Beechey Rich Mrs Robinson xii. 103 Customers..[who] thought of themselves as Small Women size when really they were WX.
4. Symbolic uses.
a. Genetics. W is used to designate the female-determining sex chromosome in species in which the female rather than the male is the heterogametic sex.
1917T. H. Morgan in Amer. Naturalist LI. 533 In moths in which the female is the heterogametic sex, the Y chromosome (or the W chromosome to use a different nomenclature) is transmitted only by the female line. 1925Amer. Naturalist LIX. 133 The locus of the F genes is in the W-chromosome that descends from mother to daughter. 1964R. A. Beatty in Armstrong & Marshall Intersexuality ii. 35 There is one kind of spermatozoon (Z) in animals with the ZW:ZZ mechanism. 1971[see heterogametic a.]. 1984Nature 23 Feb. 690/3 Natural populations [of the platyfish, Xiphophorus maculatus] are polymorphic for three sex factors (W, X and Y)... The XY and YY genotypes usually develop as males and XX, WX and WY become females; WW genotypes do not in fact occur because male gametes can never bear W factors.
b. Particle Physics. [Initial letter of weak.] W is the symbol for a heavy, charged vector boson that is probably the quantum of the weak interaction.
1960Lee & Yang in Physical Rev. Lett. IV. 310 Possible existence of a weakly coupled boson W {pm}. Ibid., The question of a neutral W° will not be examined here. 1971New Scientist 2 Sept. 498/3 The experimental results agree with this theory if the W particle has a mass of about 36 proton masses. 1977Dædalus Fall 32 Exchange of the W produces the familiar weak interactions, like nuclear beta decay. 1982Nature 23 Sept. 295/2 The heavy W and Z bosons..can be produced in pp reactions. 1983Sci. Amer. Apr. 62/2 With the discovery of the W particle a major goal of experimental elementary-particle physics has been achieved.
▸ W3 n. (also W3) with reference to the three initial letters of World Wide Web n.; (compare WWW n. at Additions). Computing = World Wide Web n.
1992T. Berners-Lee & R. Cailliau in Electronic Networking 2 57/2 The W3 team at CERN and collaborators worldwide invite any information suppliers to join the web. 1992E. Krol Whole Internet xiii. 229 Using the line-mode browser at CERN, you might see something like this:..About the W3 global information initiative. 1994Amer. Scientist Oct. 416/1 One of the documents in which the Web describes itself offers this assessment: ‘The World Wide Web (W3) is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge.’ 1998Daily Rec. (Glasgow) (Electronic ed.) 9 Oct. Back at the peaceful end of W3 is proof positive that love is to eyesight what Clinton is to memory.
▸ WMD n. weapons of mass destruction; weapon of mass destruction.
1991Congress. Rec. 1 Nov. 3673/1 The permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council met in Paris..where they declared their intent to seek the elimination of the transfer of weapons of mass destruction (*WMD) and missiles. 1998B. Hoffman in D. J. Whittaker Terrorism Reader (2002) xviii. 277 Many of the constraints (both self-imposed and technical) which previously inhibited terrorist use of WMD are eroding. 2003Time 21 Mar. 178/1 The eureka moment was..realization..that were a WMD to fall into [terrorists'] hands, their willingness to use it would be unquestioned.
▸ WWW n. Computing = World Wide Web n.; (in the form ‘www.’ this initialism, preceded by the name of the relevant protocol, constitutes the beginning of many web addresses).
[1992Electronic Networking 2 11/1 Berners-Lee writes how he uses the whole of the Internet as a World-Wide Web (WWWeb) of resources.] 1992J. Reynolds & J. B. Postel Request for Comments (Network Working Group) (Electronic text) No. 1340. 3 (table) 12 [Port Assignments]... [Keyword] *www... [Decimal] 80/tcp... [Description]... World Wide Web HTTP. 1993Special Libraries (Nexis) Jan. 66 Hypertext Spanning the Internet: WWW. 1995Internet World Feb. 83/1 Mark Pesce..introduced a proposal for a Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML)..at the first international WWW conference in Geneva last May. 1998Skydiving Mar. 52/2 (advt.) Order your off-the-shelf and custom equipment over the www. |