Wn.

Etymology: W , 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 cent., 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 cent. 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 cent. this began to be superseded by ƿ, a character borrowed from the Runic alphabet, in which its name was wyn (Kentish wen ).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 Germanic and Celtic origin. In the 11th cent. 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 Old English the sound /w/ occurred initially not only before vowels but also before /l/ and /r/. The combination wl became obsolete in the 15th cent. (in Scottish poetry wlonk , alliterating with w- words, was used in the 16th cent.); wr is still written, but the w is silent in standard English, though in some dialects it is sounded as /w/ or as /v/. Old English had also the initial combination /hw/, written hu(u , h ƿ, and subsequently ƿh , wh ; for the later development of this phonetic combination, and the history of the associated symbols, see wh n. The chief etymological sources of the English /w/ are: (1) Old English /w/, mainly representing Indogermanic w , gh^w , kw , or k^w ; (2) Old Norse /w/ of the same origin (in cited words expressed by v , according to Icelandic usage); (3) Old French /w/, retained in north-eastern French dialects, but elsewhere becoming /ɡw/ and ultimately /ɡ/, 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 centuries often written with sw ); also in a few French 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/ has a tendency to be elided in colloquial speech. Compare the pronunciations of backward , forward , always indicated by the spellings back'ard , forrard , allus ; 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 except in a special disparaging sense. In some Middle English manuscripts (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 centuries, books printed from continental type often have the letter in the divided form VV, vv. In Middle English a new /w/ arose from the development of intervocalic or final (ɣ), inherited from Old English, as in bowe < earlier boȝe < Old English boga . 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 Middle English 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 pron. (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 centuries, and in Sc. also in the 16th cent., w occasionally represents /uː/, as in trw = true, swne = soon, swth = sooth. The combination wr: wr is a consonantal combination occurring initially in a number of words (frequently implying twisting or distortion), the earlier of which usually have cognates with the same initial sounds in the older Germanic languages. The combination is regularly preserved in Gothic, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, and Old English, but in Old High German is reduced to r . In Old Norse the w was lost before rō , rū , at an early date over the whole Scandinavian area; at a later period in all other words in Old Norwegian and Old Icelandic. In the modern Germanic tongues wr- remains in Dutch, Flemish, Low German, and Frisian, and is represented by vr- in Danish, Swedish, and some Norwegian dialects. Some 130 words in wr- are recorded from the Old English period, and a number of these survive in the later language, while others have been added from Dutch and Low German. Early difficulty in pronouncing the combination may be indicated by the Old Northumbrian spellings with wur- , and by the 14–15th cent. weritt ‘writ’, werangus ‘wrongous’. The r is sometimes separated from the w by metathesis, as in Middle English wærð for wræð ‘wroth’, werch for wrech ‘wretch’, wirten for written ; but conversely wr- may arise from the same cause, as in Old English wryhta ‘wright’, for wyrhta . Signs of the dropping of the w begin to appear about the middle of the 15th cent. in such spellings as ringe for wring verb, rong for wrong adjective; these become common in the 16th cent. (for examples see wrangle n., wrap n., wreak n., wreck n.¹, wrench n.¹, wrest n.¹, etc.). Reduction of the sound is also indicated by the converse practice of writing wr- for r- , which similarly appears in the 15th cent. (in wrath for rathe ), and becomes common in the 16th; for examples see the subordinate entries under wrack n.¹, wracked adj., wrap n., wretchless adj., etc. In standard English the w was finally dropped in the 17th century; it has remained (though now obsolescent) in Scottish, and in some south-western English dialects is represented by v, which is also regular in north-eastern Scottish. The phonetists Bullokar ( Bk. Amendment of Ortographie, 1580) and Gill ( Logonomia, 1621) have wr- throughout, and no doubt pronounced the w. Later authorities, e.g. R. Hodges ( English Primrose, 1644), mark the w in this combination as silent.