Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The 20th letter of the Greek alphabet.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The Greek letter γ, υ, corresponding to the English u (and y).
  • noun The Greek letter Γ, υ, corresponding to the English u (and y).

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The 20th letter (Υ, υ) of the Greek alphabet, a vowel having originally the sound of � as in room, becoming before the 4th century b. c. that French u or Ger. ü. Its equivalent in English is u or y.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The twentieth letter of the Classical and Modern Greek, the twenty-first letter of Old and Ancient.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the 20th letter of the Greek alphabet

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Late Greek ū psīlon, simple u (from the fact that oi was given the same pronunciation in Late Greek as u) : ū, hū, the letter U + psīlon, neuter of psīlos, simple (written with one letter as opposed to two).]

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Examples

  • The first reported discovery of a new particle by Lederman's group turned out to be erroneous; initially dubbed the upsilon, it was famously renamed the "oops-Leon."

    American Scientist Online 2009

  • By changing two letters, we can see how things could have been misinterpreted: an original lambda may look like an upsilon, an original theta may look like an Etruscan ef.

    Is Etruscan muifu even a word? 2010

  • By changing two letters, we can see how things could have been misinterpreted: an original lambda may look like an upsilon, an original theta may look like an Etruscan ef.

    Archive 2010-03-01 2010

  • This spelling seems to be quite old, going back as far as Deecke/Pauli, Etruskische Forschungen und Studien 1881 and when I look for myself at the tiny picture of the statuette provided in Jannot's book, I must admit that I'm pretty sure that I see a iota between the upsilon and the ef too.

    Archive 2008-04-01 2008

  • To add icing to the cake however there is also another instance of the name in Etruscan itself, Ruvries TLE 32, and no iota is present after the upsilon either.

    More comedy with the purported Etruscan name Ruifri 2008

  • Scientists recently made sense of an odd jiggle in upsilon andromedae: the wobble's caused by three giant planets orbiting the star.

    The 'Talk-Show Avoidance' Strategy 2008

  • The Greek scholar will look to the Greek letters for Jesus: "iota eta sigma omicron upsilon sigma," which is variously transliterated IHSOYS or IHCOYC, the latter when converted to Latin letters using the common curved sigma variant.

    Archive 2008-09-01 Sissie 2008

  • To add icing to the cake however there is also another instance of the name in Etruscan itself, Ruvries TLE 32, and no iota is present after the upsilon either.

    Archive 2008-04-01 2008

  • The Greek scholar will look to the Greek letters for Jesus: "iota eta sigma omicron upsilon sigma," which is variously transliterated IHSOYS or IHCOYC, the latter when converted to Latin letters using the common curved sigma variant.

    More on the "H" Sissie 2008

  • This spelling seems to be quite old, going back as far as Deecke/Pauli, Etruskische Forschungen und Studien 1881 and when I look for myself at the tiny picture of the statuette provided in Jannot's book, I must admit that I'm pretty sure that I see a iota between the upsilon and the ef too.

    More comedy with the purported Etruscan name Ruifri 2008

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